U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
8 B BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY— BULLETIN NO. 159. 

Q /\r\ B. T. QMA.O\yx\, Chief of Bureau. 

LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON 
VARIETIES. 



O. F. iX)OK, 
BioNOMiST, Bureau of Plant Industry. 



Issued September 28, 1909. 




WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNM.ENT PRINTING OFFITE 
.1909. 




Class S 6 g < K^ 

Book ■ Q"] ^ 



U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 

' BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY— BULLETIN NO. 159. 

B. T. GALLOWAY, Chief of Bureau. 



LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON 
VARIETIES. 



O: F. COOK, 

•I 

BioNOMisT, Bureau of Plant Industry. 



Issued September 28, 1909. 




/^ 



WASHINGTON; 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 

1909, 






BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY. 



Chief of Bureau, Ukvioulv T. Cali.hwav. 
Aasislant Chief of Bureau, Alhekt V. Woods. 
Editor, J. E. Rockwell. 
Chief Clerk, James E. Jone.s. 



BioNOMic Investigations of Tropical and Subtuoi'ical Plants. 

SCIENTIFIC staff. 

O. F. Cook, Bionomist in Charge. 
G. N. Collins and F. L. Lewton. Assistant Botanisi.s. 
II. nttier, .7. H. Klnsler, and A. McLachlan, Special Agents. 
R. M. Meade, Scientific Assistant, 



159 
2 



SEP 27 1909 



: O 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 



U. S. Department of Agriculture, 

Bureau or Plaxt Indistry, 

Office of the Chief, 

WashhigtoH. I). ('., June 25, 1909. 
Sir: 1 have the honor lo transmit hercAvith a paper entitled " Local 
Adjustment of Cotton Varieties," by Mr. (). F. Cook, and reconnnend 
its publication as Bullelin Xo. 159 of the special series of the Bureau 
of riant Industry. 

By maintaining" local adjustment, crops can be improved, even 
without improving varieties. That ne^v conditions and unfavorable 
seasons may render varieties less uniform has l)een known in horti- 
cultural plants. Tlie present study shows that such facts have a 
j)ractical application in field crops and that they must be taken into 
account in problems of heredity and breeding. 
Respectfully, 

B. T. (talloway, 

Chief of Bureau. 
Hon. James AVilson. 

Seeretarij of A(/iiculture. 
159 3 



CONTENTS 



Page. 

Introduction 7 

Diversity as a new-place effect 10 

New-place diversity distinct from fluctuating variation 11 

'New-place diversity distinct from accommodation to external conditions. . 13 

Relation of new-place diversities to heredity 15 

A comparison of diversity in two localities 16 

Tests of inheritance of divergent characters 20 

Diversity without hybridization 26 

Increased yields from local adjustment 30 

Other tests of local adjustment 31 

Improved quality of fiber 32 

Increased earliness 32 

Larger bolls 34 

Larger proportions of five-locked bolls 34 

Age of seed and difference of crops 35 

Methods of testing cotton varieties 37 

Methods of introducing new varieties 40 

Relation of local adjustment to other variations 44 

Environmental characters also hereditary 44 

Correlation of characters and new-place effects 45 

Environmental changes accompanied by increased diversity 46 

Effect of seasons and times of planting 47 

Aggregate and promissuous mutations 50 

Relation of selection to local adjustment 52 

Limitations of local adjustment 54 

Differences between local adjustment and breeding 56 

Local adjustment as a farm operation 62 

Superiority of home-grown seed 63 

Conclusions 65 

Index 69 

159 5 



B. P. I.— 490. 



LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON 
VARIETIES. 



INTRODUCTION. 

A variet}^ of cotton planted in a new place usually behaves in an 
abnormal manner. Tlie abnormal behavior is generally proportional 
to the change of conditions, though difl'erent varieties respond in dif- 
ferent ways to the same set of new conditions. Central American 
varieties of cotton grown for the first time in Texas usually show a 
definite alteration of the habits of growth and a notable decline in 
fertility. To lead an imported variety back to the regular expression 
of its normal characteristics and productiveness is called acclimatiza- 
tion. Varieties that do not remain entirely sterile under the new 
conditions can usually be brought back to their normal characteristics 
and fertility in from three to five generations. 

When our Upland varieties of cotton are carried from one part of 
the cotton belt to another, or otherw^ise placed under new conditions, 
they also show deviations from their normal characteristics. Though 
the changes in the characters of the plants are very much less than 
with the imported varieties, they often have a serious elfect upon the 
quantity and quality of the crop. To avoid this kind of deteriora- 
tion, a process of local adjustment is required, analogous to acclimati- 
zation, but more readily accomplished. 

Though local adjustment, viewed from the biological standpoint, is 
a much less striking phenomenon than acclimatization, it has a much 
greater and more general agricultural importance. The difficulties 
which have to be surmounted by acclimatization are met only in the 
introduction of new varieties from remote regions. It is only when 
we consider the advantage that might come from the successful intro- 
duction of better types of plants or of plants better adapted to special 
conditions or uses that acclimatization becomes a subject of general 
interest. 

Local adjustment is of practical importance in quite a different 
way. The failure to make use of local adjustment does not result in 
a rare or occasional expense, but causes a very general and regular 
loss to the cotton industry, a loss that would be represented by enor- 
mous annual totals if the facts could be definitely known. Even at 

159 7 



8 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

a low estimate of 10 per cent, which is certainly far beloAv the average, 
the increased crop which could be secured by attention to the facts of 
local adjustment would have an annual value of $00,000,000. With 
very slight expense of time and effort in the selection of seed for local 
adjustment, and with no other change, either in varieties, lands, or 
methods of culture, it would be possible to add 10 per cent to our 
cotton crop or to reduce the acreage and expense of production by 
a similar amount without reduction of the yield. 

Our experiments in Texas lead us to believe that the losses oc- 
casioned by the boll weevil can be well-nigh made good if the ad- 
vantage of local adjustment be added to those that can be gained by 
using better varieties and better methods of culture. This indication 
may not apply in the more humid districts in the eastern part of the 
State, but appears to have ample warrant in the western and southern 
partSi where our experiments have been made. Rainy weather during 
the growing season favors the rapid multiplication of the weevils 
and may enable them to ruin the crop in wet seasons, even in regions 
that usually escape serious injury, but these more severe attacks are 
usualh^ confined to rather limited areas and are not likely to occur 
every year, whereas a continuous advantage can be gained from local 
adjustment. To maintain uniformity b}^ local adjustment is espe- 
cially important in weevil-infested regions as a means of securing 
the earliest and most uniform development of the plants, and thus 
allow the largest possible crop to be set before the weevils become 
destructively abundant. 

The reader may be unwilling to believe that so simple an expedient 
as local adjustment should have been so long neglected if it has any 
such importance as claimed. The fact that notably increased yields 
of cotton, as of other crops, can be secured by selection of seed has not 
remained unknown, but the reasons whj^ such improvements occur 
are not fully understood. The benefits that can be obtained at once 
from local adjustment have been confused with the much slower and 
more gradual changes that accompany the selection of carefully 
tested, exceptionally superior individuals. The emphasis that is often 
laid on special skill, precaution, and persistence as necessary qualifica- 
tions for the successful breeder has tended to keep the average farmer 
from undertaking to improve his own crops by selection. 

Local adjustment can be viewed as something quite apart from 
breeding for improvement; its object is merely to keep a variety as 
it is, instead of allowing it to deteriorate b}^ becoming diversified as 
a result of changes of external conditions or of unfavorable seasons. 
No matter how superior a part of the plants may be it is certain that 
the highest yields can not be secured unless all of the plants are' 
kept as near as possible to the standards of the variety. The better 

159 



INTRODUCTION, 9 

the variety is the more serious the loss that conies from neglect of 
local adjustment, for the greater is the probability that every change 
from the characters of the variety will be in the direction of inferiority. 

To know that yields can be increased by selection is a useful fact, 
but it is still better to have an adequate reason for it. A fact illumi- 
nated bv reasons, so that the mind can follow and understand its rela- 
tions, is what we call a scientific fact; a fact without a reason is called 
an empirical fact. It is often possible to utilize a fact without under- 
standing it, but facts that we can understand are still more likely to 
be utilized. The art of farming includes large numbers of empirical 
facts that have come down to us as customs and traditions, but we 
take up very slowly and unwillingly any new method or operation 
unless a positive necessity or a very definite advantage can be shown. 
As long as the issue is not clear or the results are not so definite and 
invariable as to leave no room for doubt, the new requirement is likely 
to be avoided. 

As soon as the farmer appreciates the fact that lessened uniformity 
is one of the chief causes of deterioration in cotton varieties he will 
also be convinced that the selection of his own seed is just as essential 
and necessary a part of his farm operations as the planting, cultiva- 
tion, and harvesting of his crop. 

It may be that local adjustment has not the same im^iortance in 
other crops as in cotton, but here, at least, it is evident that the selec- 
tion of seed for local adjustment is quite as important as any other 
work with the crop. A small amount of labor has a large effect on 
the final returns. Except for the picking of the larger crop it takes 
no more work to raise a well-adjusted strain of cotton than one that 
is deficient in adjustment. The selection of seed for purposes of local 
adjustment requires a certain degree of care and skill, but nothing 
beyond the ability to be found in the average farmer's family. The 
wife or the children may prove more capable than the farmer him- 
self, and their assistance need not be refused, since the w^ork is easy 
and enjoyable. 

In thus pointing out the practical advantages that are to be ex- 
pected from local adjustment, there is no intention to imply that the 
results will always be the same as those that have appeared in our 
experiments. The factors that are involved in local adjustment are 
highly variable, in the very nature of the case, since they have direct 
relation to variable external conditions. The details of the experi- 
ments given in this report are introduced as illustrations of the dif- 
ferent ways that the factors of local adjustment have appeared to 
work, not as adequate demonstrations of local adjustment, even for 
the varieties and the conditions under which our experiments have 
been made. If the facts of diversity and local adjustment were rare 
720— Bull. 159—09^ — 2 



10 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

or exceptional there might be need to establish them by more elaborate 
evidence, but they are readily accessible to observation, if not already 
familiar to students of cotton, A more general recognition of their 
j^ractical importance may be expected to secure for them the careful 
attention of experimenters. 

DIVERSITY AS A NEW-PLACE EFEECT. 

When a high-grade variety of cotton or of any other cultivated 
plant is grown in a new place and fails to give as good results as in 
its home locality, it is usual to draw the conclusion that the conditions 
of climate or soil of the new locality are unfavorable to the variety. 
Even when no unfavorable factors are known, it is still usual to trust 
to the assumption that some peculiarity of the variety renders it less 
suited to the new surroundings than to the old. It does not surprise 
us that a carefully selected variety fails to appear to the same ad- 
vantage outside of the region in wdiich it was developed. The selec- 
tion of plants for purposes of agricultural improvement must always 
have reference to the external conditions under which the selection 
is made. Nevertheless, it is as distinctly a mistake to ascribe too 
much to the special adaptations of varieties as to leave this factor 
out of account. AVe must learn what we can regarding the nature 
of the changes that take place under new conditions, and of the 
possibilit}' of avoiding them. 

When a variety of Upland cotton planted in a new district fails 
to attain the standards of the variety, it is usually very easy to show 
that inferiority of the new conditions is not the only cause of the 
failure, or even the chief cause. Comparison of the individual plants 
with each other will soon make it evident that the^^ are much more 
unlike among themselves than an}^ reasonable supposition of in- 
equality in the conditions would explain. Many individual plants 
are likely to' be found wdiich have not fallen below the previous 
standards of the variety. 

The best of the plants, rather than the worst or the general aver- 
age, represent the proper test of the possibilities of the variety under 
the new" conditions. The unequal behavior of the plants will often 
be found to be a larger factor in the low general average than any 
definite limitation set by the external conditions. If the best plants 
are as good as in the home locality of the variety we may have an 
assurance that the new conditions are not in themselves directly and 
essentially unfavorable, for in that case none of the plants would be 
able to attain the fully developed characters of the type. The crop 
may be damaged as much by changes that arise in the plants as a 
result of new conditions as by factors that actually limit the growth 
of the plants, but the nature of the damage is different in the two 
cases. 

159 



DIVERSITY AS A NEW-PLACE EFFECT. 11 

The more carefully the matter is studied the more evident it be- 
comes that the failures of many individual plants to show the true 
characteristics of their variety when grown in a new j^lace are con- 
nected with differences in the plants themselves and are not directly 
connected or proportioned to the differences in the conditions occupied 
by the various individuals. The greater diversity shown among the 
members of the variety in the new place explains the apparent de- 
terioration. To avoid this diversity and thus maintain a more gen- 
eral conformity to the normal characters of the type is the object of 
local adjustment. 

External conditions that are actually unfavorable to the growth 
of the plants may be less conducive to undesirable new-place effects 
than conditions that are distinctly better for an acclimatized or locally 
adjusted stock of the same kind of plants. This was conspicuously 
shown in an experiment with imported types of Upland cotton at 
Falfurrias, Tex., in 1907. In the rows that ran out into drier and 
more sterile soil a large proportion of the smaller plants in the dry 
soil kept nearly the normal characteristics, whereas among the larger 
plants in the better soil onl}^ a few individuals remained small and 
normal. The few small plants in the moist soil and the few large 
plants in the dry soil showed that individual differences in the plants 
were able to fully counteract the differences in the conditions. 

The inspection of even a few fields with such distinctions in mind 
is likely to convince any person who is at all familiar with such 
cotton that diversity among the plants themselves is a factor of prac- 
tical importance in the diminution of crops and deterioration of 
varieties. Something in the way of special training or of natural 
aptitude may be required to give one a full appreciation of this 
diversity as a concrete, scientific fact, and to enable comparisons to 
be made between amounts of diversity that are present in different 
stocks of cotton or in different localities. Some persons appear to 
be as distinctly lacking in the necessary powers of perception of minor 
differences of form as others are of shades of color, but it is believed 
that most people will be able to recognize the forms of diversity that 
figure in the local adjustment of cotton varieties. 

NEAV-PLACE diversity distinct from FLUCTUATING VARIATION. 

The chief difficulty that has interfered with the recognition of the 
phenomena of diversity by scientific students and experimenters is 
not that they are not readily visible, but that they have been confused 
with other types of variation, such as the ordinary fluctuating differ- 
ences, accommodative changes, direct effects of environment, and 
diversity due to hybridization. 

159 



12 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

Diversification under new conditions represents a fourth group of 
facts quite different from the other three, and much more related to 
the phenomenon of mutation, as described by De Vries. The progeny 
of divergent phmts may be exjDected to show fluctuating differences 
like the members of other varieties, and mutative changes may affect 
the same characters that are subject to accommodation, but such facts 
need not prevent the recognition of essential differences. That seed- 
ling plants are able to become more diverse among themselves when 
grown in a new place, even in the first season, and that these diversi- 
ties have a relation to external conditions are facts not commonly 
recognized. 

The recognition of these new-place diversities does not depend upon 
the systems of measurements that have been applied to fluctuating 
variations. Careful measurements of large numbers of plants or 
animals may lead to the recognition of differences that would not 
otherwise be detected, but in this case the differences are readily ap- 
preciable by direct observation. If the cotton plants that show diver- 
sity had to be detected by elaborate systems of measurements, local 
adjustment would be altogether impracticable. A considerable body 
of scientific workers would be needed for a whole season to give an 
adequate statistical account of the diversities of a single field of cot- 
ton. It may be obvious at a glance that the leaves of a plant are 
narrower than those of its neighbors, but many hours might be 
required to measure, record, and compute with proper care the data 
that are necessary for a mathematical determination of the actual 
differences of proportion that are responsible for the general im- 
pression. The leaves of the same cotton plant are so variable among 
themselves that a large number would need to be measured before 
general averages could be established. 

And even after a statistical difference has been ascertained it might 
still convey a very inadequate idea of the diversities that figure in 
local adjustment. Mutative changes seldom appear to affect one 
character alone, and do not obey the law of regression established by 
Galton. Unlike the fluctuating variations which may be thought of 
as mere deviations from the same course or standard of heredity, 
mutative changes render the plants essentially different throughout, 
often quite as different as the members of distinct species, or even 
more so. Indeed, one of the serious objections to the idea of muta- 
tions as new species lies in the fact that the members of mutative 
varieties of domesticated plants are much more alike among them- 
selves than are the members of w^ild species living under natural 
conditions. 

To describe the nuitative variations of our cotton varieties as new 
species would be a very formidable undertaking and may be left to 

159 



DIVERSITY AS A NEW-PLACE EFFECT. 13 

those who believe that mutations are really species. The present 
report is intended onlj^ to call attention to the fact that such varia- 
tions are of frequent occurrence in cotton, that their numbers are 
still further increased by changes of external conditions, even to the 
extent of injuring crops and causing varieties to deteriorate, and, 
finally, that these dangers are to be avoided by continued selection 
for local adjustment. 

NEW-PLACE DIVERSITY DISTINCT FROINI ACCOMMODATION TO EXTERNAL 

CONDITIONS. 

Changes of characters that have definite relations to external con- 
ditions are usually called adaptations or accommodations. Writers 
on evolution and heredity have recorded many examples of plants and 
unimals that show accommodations to different conditions. Among 
the most familiar instances are the amphibious members of the butter- 
cup family that have ordinary rounded leaves when growing on land, 
and very narrow, finely divided leaves wdien growing in Avater. The 
same individual can be induced to change the form of its leaves by 
planting it in water or taking it back to dry land. 

The larger, thinner leaves that the coffee plant produces in the 
shade Avill not endure exposure to the sun, so that shade-grown seed- 
lings usually lose all their leaves when planted in open places. If 
the change is not too severe the plant is able to adapt itself to the new 
conditions by putting out smaller, narrower leaves of firmer texture 
able to endure exposure to the sun. 

Similar changes occur in the stature and habits of growth of the 
cotton plant in response to differences of environment. In one local- 
ity every individual will be larger and have more numerous vegeta- 
tive branches than any individual of the same variety as it grows in 
some other locality. In localities wdiere the winds are strong some 
varieties develop stiffer stems that resist the wind, while others avoid 
the need of such resistance by assuming a prostrate habit of growth 
and sending their branches out along the. ground. Two selections 
from the same stock of Mexican cotton showed the same habits of 
growth at Victoria, Tex., but at Del Rio one of these developed 
a stronger central stem than at Victoria, while the other became 
notably prostrate. 

Our experiments Avith the acclimatization and local adjustment of 
cotton varieties have made it certain that there is another class of 
changes of characters, those that accompany changes of external con- 
ditions, and yet stand in no such direct relations with the external 
conditions as do the adaptive or accommodative changes. Though 
accommodative changes may often appear to make members of the 
same species unlike they are not thought of as rendering them more 



14 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

diverse or individually ditt'ereiit. An accommodative change may be 
shared by all the plants with as much uniformity as an}' other feature. 

Many of the changes of characters that occur in new places, instead 
of rendering the j^lants better fitted for the new conditions, render 
them less fitted. This is certainly trne of the instances in which the 
plants that change their characters are rendered unproductive or 
completely sterile. A wild plant that behaved as many of our newly 
imported varieties of cotton have done would have no prospect of 
surviving. And yet several of the varieties that were nearly sterile 
in the earlier generations have returned to normal habits of growth 
and fertility after a few years of acclimatization. 

Experience with these more profound changes that attend the 
process of acclimatization has made it easier to appreciate the nature 
of the diversity that necessitates the careful adjustment of varieties 
to local conditions, even in our United States Upland type of cotton, 
where the stage of acclimatization was long since passed. 

Since many of the changes of characters that occur under new con- 
ditions obviously do not serve purposes of adaptation, and often result 
in wide individual differences, even under the same external condi- 
tions, it is evident that they ought not to be considered as due to 
accommodative changes of characters, but rather as resulting from 
loss or disturbance of adjustments of heredity previously established 
by selection or by mutation. We may inquire, therefore, into the 
nature of the adjustment of characters that is disturbed Avhen a 
variety is planted in a new place, to gain an indication of the possi- 
bility of restoring the adjustment and regaining a uniform expression 
of characters under the new conditions. 

The fact that the diversity that appears under a new environment 
is not the same as a regularly established accommodation does not 
compel us to deny that new-place diversity may have an adaptive 
value, since it allows a species to make tests, as it were, of the many 
forms that its members are able to assume. The forms that prove 
to be best adapted to the conditions are most likely to survive, and the 
species may thus secure a better footing than if compelled to keep to 
a form less suited to the new^ surroundings. Thus Ave may consider 
new-place variations as experiments in accommodation or as afford- 
ing the materials from which the more definitely accommodative 
characters may be developed. 

It is often assumed that natural selection must have the same 
tendency as artificial selection to reduce the members of a stock to a 
condition of uniformity in their environmental relations. Natural 
selection, however, is a composite of many factors often completely 
opposite. A dry season that gives the plants a selection for drought 
resistance may be followed by a wet year that tests their progeny for 

159 



RELA-TION OF NEW-PLACE DIVEESITIES TO HEREDITY. 15 

iiliility ((.) endure excessive moisture. The advantage would not lie 
with the lines of descent tliat specialized exclusively on drought 
resistance or on flood resistance, but Avith those that kept the two 
contrasted qualities represented in the family, either by producing 
progeny of two kinds or by combining the two qualities in the same 
individuals. Even though all the drought-resistant individuals were 
wiped out in a particularly wet season the drought-resistant charac- 
teristic need not be lost to the species, but might continue undimin- 
ished in transmission. 

Much emphasis has been placed upon natural selection as an agency 
for producing greater uniformity through the weeding out of the 
lines of descent that 3deld weak or defective individuals, but this is 
not a reason for holding that the survivors are made more uniform 
among themselves by natural selection. The tendency is rather to 
preserve and combine all the different characters that give increased 
abilities or powers of resistance.* 

RELATION OF NEW-PLACE DIVERSITIES TO HEREDITY. 

The agricultural superiority of a carefully selected variety depends 
largely upon the greater uniformity that follows persistent selection. 
Wild or unimproved types differ from our high-grade varieties not so 
much in a complete lack of the desirable characters as in a failure 
to produce the desirable characters with sufficient regularity. Suc- 
cess in the art of breeding is largely a matter of securing uniform 
progeny from desirable parents. 

With seed-propagated field crops like cotton, uniformity of char- 
acters is established by persistent selection. The breeder reduces and 
eliminates the individual diversity that renders a wild or unimproved 
stock inferior for agricultural purposes to stocks that have been im- 
proved by selection. By rejecting all the individuals that express 
other than the desired set of characters, much higher averages of the 
desirable features are secured by the breeder. A still more effective 
method is to preserve only those individuals that bring the desired 
characters to the highest degree of expression. 

It is often supposed that a sufficiently thorough course of selection 
is able to completely eliminate the undesirable diversity of characters 
from a domesticated variety, but it is very doubtful whether the 
ancestral diversity is ever destroyed, in the sense of ceasing to be 

" For a better appreciation of these tendencies of natural selection to main- 
tain diversity in species and pi-esei've the extremes of expression of environ- 
mental characters, the writer is indebted to Mr. A. F. Woods. The point has an 
evolutionary bearing, since it suggests a way in which natural selection may 
assist evolution by preserving diverse tendencies among the members of the 
same species and thus allowing the most advantageous combinations to be 
built up. 
159 



16 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES; 

transmitted. With the most favorable conditions and in varieties 
that have been bred with the utmost care, individual examples of di- 
versity continue to appear more or less frequently. No complete 
uniformity is ever attained. Even in vegetative varieties of i3lants 
grown only from cuttings or in varieties of wheat that are regularly 
self-fertilized, variant individuals are still to be found. That the 
original diversity of characters has continued to be transmitted, even 
in these most uniform types," is also shown when hybrids are made, 
and a large number of the ancestral diversities reappear at the same 
time and under the same external conditions. 

These considerations make it quite unnecessary to suppose that the 
diversities that crop out among the members of a variety in a new 
l^lace are impressed upon the jolants by the external conditions. We 
are fully warranted in believing that much of the diversity represents 
inherent transmitted characters which have been able to come back 
into expression because the change of conditions has disturbed the 
previous adjustments that selection had established. It is not neces- 
sary to suppose that the diversities shown in the new place are dif- 
ferent in any essential respect from the relatively rare individual 
sports or mutations that appear in the varieties, even under accus- 
tomed conditions. The chief ditference is that the new conditions 
call forth many of these variations at the^same time. Instead of 
sporadic mutations of single individuals, we often obtain in a new 
place a simultaneous promiscuous mutation of many individuals, 
sometimes of all the individuals, each becoming definitely unlike any 
of its neighbors, even when large numbers are carefully compared. 

Viewed in this way it is possible to understand what our experi- 
ments show to be a fact, that even a relatively large disturbance of 
heredity shown by a variety of cotton planted in a new locality does 
not afford a sure indication that the conditions are unfavorable. And 
where the conditions are not unfavorable it ought not to be considered 
impossible to restore the previous uniformity of the stock by renewing 
the process of selection that established the uniformity in the first 
place. Experiments have also shown that such readjustments are 
readily established, at least in the cotton varieties with which experi- 
ments have been made. 

A COMPARISON OF DIVERSITY IN TWO LOCALITIES. 

To gain definite information regarding the nature and extent of 
the diversity which is aroused by planting a variety of cotton under 
slightly different conditions, a careful comparison was made between 
two fields of Triumph cotton — one at Lockhart, Tex., the other at 
Kerrville, Tex., in the season of 1007. Both of these localities are in 
the west-central part of Texas. Lockhart lies G3 miles northeast of 



COMPAEISON OF DIVERSITY IN TWO LOCALITIES. 17 

San Antonio, at an altitude of about 500 feet, while Kerrville is 71 
miles to the northwest, with an altitude of about 1,700 feet. The 
soil conditions as far as they affect the size of the plants do not 
appear to be seriously different. 

The Triumph cotton is known to breeders as one of the most 
regularly uniform varieties. It was originated at Lockhart by Mr. 
i^lexander Mebane, and has been carefully selected by him for a con- 
siderable series of years. It would be difficult to imagine better 
examples of uniformity in a variety of seed-propagated plants than 
are afforded by Mr. Mebane's fields of Triumph cotton. A careful 
inspection of about 50 acres of Mr. Mebane's cotton resulted in finding' 
only three plants that appeared to be definitely different from their 
fellows. 

Immediately after this test of diversity had been applied at Lock- 
hart, and with the uniformity of the Triumph cotton at that place 
as a basis of comparison, a similar study was made of a much smaller 
field of cotton raised at Kerrville, Tex., from seed grown by Mr. 
Mebane at Lockhart. The difference in diversity between the two 
places was very striking. Adjacent individual plants were often 
obviously unlike, and a considerable percentage of the plants could 
be reckoned as showing distinct departures from the Triumph type. 

If the facts were to be interpreted in the usual manner, any 
observer would have felt fully justified in saying that the conditions 
at Kerrville were much less favorable than at Lockhart, for many 
of the plants were distinctly inferior in size and fertility and many 
of the smaller individuals remained quite sterile. It would be very 
natural, of course, to use these small and unproductive plants as 
examples of unfavorable conditions, but other facts showed that this 
explanation was insufficient. In addition to many small plants that 
remained completely sterile, there were numerous others that had 
unusually small bolls, different from those of the Triumph cotton. 
Other peculiarities of habits of growth rendered these small-boiled 
plants closely similar to inferior plants that appear among our Cen- 
tral American cottons during acclimatization. Moreover, these pecu- 
liar plants with the small bolls Avere notably later than those that 
kept the normal Triumph characteristics, so that no ripe seed could 
be obtained. 

In addition to the small-boiled plants there were many other indi- 
viduals that showed less violent departures from the normal Triumi^h 
characters, but still very definite differences. The nature of these 
differences is indicated in the following notes that were made on a 
series of selections of variant plants, in order to test the inheritance 
of their divergent characters : 

(1) Plant tall; bolls rather varied in size and shape, broad but 
long pointed, sometimes with groove in the middle of the carpel at 
720— Bull. 159—00 ?> 



18 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VAEIETIES. 

the tip; lint abundant, long. The next plant in the row, apparently 
normal, had lint only half as long. 

(2) Plant very open; basal internodes of the branches very long; 
lint long; seed smooth. 

(3) A very small, low, short- jointed plant, with two branches 
at each node, possibly a result of injury to the main stem. 

(4) Kather larger than its neighbors. Branches all rather long, 
only one from a node ; bolls rather large, all but one with five locks ; 
seeds very large, smooth, with a light-brown ridge along one side. 

(5) Plant vigorous; bolls large, not notably different from 
^Triumph ; seed rather small, greenish ; lint very fine, silky, especially 
in one boll, 

(G) Small plant, about 1 foot high, with light foliage; small bolls, 
rather narrow and pointed ; fruiting branches very short, with only 
two or three internodes, three of the branches with only one leaf and 
a boll ; lint fine, medium ; seed small ; bracts connate at base. 

(7) Plant large and vigorous, notably more fertile than neighbors; 
branches long; lint very abundant and of good length; seed green, 
rather small. 

(8) Plant medium, open^ either not vigorous or very early and 
determinate. Most of the leaves already moribund (determinate). 
Leaves rather long pointed, but some entire without lobes ; bolls small, 
narrow, pointed, some with only three locks, others with four and 
five ; seed smooth. 

(9) A small, low, spreading, double-branched plant. Seed with 
short green fuzz in upper part and long white fuzz below. 

(10) A very large plant with long, simple, and double branches 
and long basal internodes; large Triumph-like bolls; seed very smooth 
with a small brown tuft at base ; lint of medium length, fine. 

(11) A large, open plant with long branches, ripening more bolls 
to date than any of its neighbors, perhaps also determinate ; lint not 
long, but abundant ; numerous aborted seeds with lint developed. 

(12) A small, open -plant with four rather long slender vegetative 
branches; fertile branches of one or two internodes; only one boll, 
very small. 

(13) A vigorous, long-branched plant; very hairy, notably more 
so than any of its neighbors, on the stalks, branches, petioles, pe- 
duncles, and bracts, and on the veins of the lower surface of the 
leaves. 

(14) Plant vigorous, but not oversized; leaves rather gray-green 
with long, rather narrow lobes; very sliort primary branches pushing 
out at all the nodes and giving the main stem a leafy appearance; 

159 



COMPARISON OF DIVERSITY IN TWO LOCALITIES, 19 

Stems unusually liaiiy, but somewhat less than in the preceding; bolls 
small; lint short; more fertile than the neighboring plants. 

It became evident that the diversity alone would account for a 
considerable diminution of the crop at Kerrville without resorting 
to the idea that the conditions were really less favorable than at 
Lockhart. Many individual plants that retained their normal char- 
acters were also as fertile as at Lockhart. A further test of the 
possibilities of normal behavior for the Triumph cotton under the 
Kerrville conditions was afforded by the adjacent experiments with 
cotton of the same variety which was being grown for the second 
time at Kerrville. In this there was no such amount of diversity and 
no such obvious disparity of yield among the individual plants as 
in the plot grown from the seed newly Ijrought in from Lockhart. 

The fact that our Upland varieties of cotton are not uniform, 
but usually show a large amount of diversity among the individual 
plants, has been generally remarked by breeders and experimenters. 
Stress has usually been laid upon the idea that breeders of varieties 
have not been sufficiently careful and persistent in selection or that 
there has been a relapse to diversity through admixture of seed in 
ginning or through cross-fertilization with other varieties in the 
iSeld. The following conclusions were reached by Dr. J. F. Duggar, 
director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, where a 
long series of tests of cotton varieties has been made : 

Man has clone qnite as nincli as nature to increase tbe confusion as to the 
varieties of American Upland cotton. The chief difficulty that has been 
encountered in the attempt to describe and classify cottons grown at Auburn 
under several hundred different names has been the absence of uniformity 
among the plants of a single variety. While this variability is partly due to 
natural agencies, it is also largely due to the failure of growers to avoid the 
mechanical admixture of the seed of other varieties, which so easily occui's 
at public gins. W^orse still, in the case of many, perhaps most, of the so-called 
varieties, there has been no long period of selection through successive years 
with a view to fixing a uniform type." 

But whatever the causes of diversity in other varieties, it is evident 
in the case of the Triumph cotton that a variety which has been 
brought to a notable degree of uniformity in its home locality may 
at once become diverse when transferred to another district, at no 
great distance, and even under conditions that are not really unfavor- 
able to the variety, as shown by the readiness with which it returns 
to uniformity after selection for local adjustment. 

" Desci'iptions and Classification of Varieties of American TTpland Cotton. 
Bulletin 140, Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, July, 1007, p. 24 
159 



20 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

TESTS OF INHERITANCE OF DIVERGENT CHARACTERS. 

As a further means of determining the nature of the differences 
that appeared in the Triumph variety as a result of the transfer 
from Lockhart to Kerrville, seed was saved separately from four- 
teen plants that seemed to show the most definite divergence from 
the varietal characters of the Triumph cotton. The seeds of these 
individual selections were planted at Kerrville in 1908, but a late 
frost killed most of the seedlings, in some cases all. Nevertheless, 
enough of the plants remained to make it veiy evident that some of 
the divergent characters were definitely inherited. 

Plants noted as having branches with unusually long basal inter- 
nodes and very open habits of growth (Selection No. 2) gave progeny 
of the same kind, very definitely contrasted with the progeny of low, 
compact, short-jointed plants, which showed a similar fidelity to 
parental characteristics. Some of the tall plants were noted by Mr. 
Rowland M. Meade as having the leaves and branches arranged in a 
one-third spiral instead of the usual three-eighths spiral, which would 
account for their more open form. 

A plant (No. 9), selected because of a pronounced tendency to pro- 
duce two branches from each node of the main stem, gave progeny 
in which this character was similarly pronounced, much as in the 
vfeevil-resistant Kekchi cotton from Guatemala. If this peculiarity 
had not been noted in the first generation, the second generation might 
have been suspected of being a Kekchi hybrid. 

Another case of the same kind was found in a plant selected for 
unusual hairiness of leaves and stems, giving a distinct suggestion 
of approach to the more hairy Central American types of cotton, 
which was definitely repeated in the second generation (Selection 
No. 13). Another mutation w^ith the hairy characteristic definitel}'^ 
expressed and as definitely inherited also had leaves with somewhat 
narrower lobes than in Triumph cotton and more commonly 5-lobed, 
as often happens in the Kekchi cotton. It also showed in both gener- 
ations a distinct tendency to develop a short primary branch at each 
node, giving the main stalk an unusually leafy appearance (Selection 
No. 14). 

Many other examples might be given in which mutations of our 
Upland cottons showed interesting resemblances to the Central Amer- 
ican Upland types, as though to indicate a common ancestry for the 
whole Upland series. One of the most frequent approximations of 
this kind occurs in small, broadly branching, tree-shaped plants with 
very small bolls, as already noted in the general account of the Tri- 
umph mutations at Kerrville. From the only small-bolIed plant 
which afforded rij^e seed only one plant was raised, and this had 
I5y 



TESTS OF INHEKITANCE OF DIVERGENT CHARACTEES. 21 

notably small bolls, though it retained the Triumph character of short 
fruiting branches, as the parent plant had also done." 

Peculiarities of the lint and seeds were also definitely inherited in 
the progeny of the Triumph mutations, though not with complete 
regularity. Notably long-linted parents gave notably long-linted 
jDrogeny, short-linted parents short-linted progeny. The smooth- 
seeded character was retained in several instances, though not in all, 
while the tendency to a green color in the fuzz of the seeds was less in 
the second generation than in the first. 

None of these mutations of Triumph at Kerrville were as con- 
spicuously different from the parent stock as a plant that was pointed 
out to us by Mr. Mebane in one of his Triumph fields at Lockhart in 
190G. This individual was about twice as tall as its normal Triumph 
neighbors and large in proportion. Its vigorous upright habit of 
growth and its foliage, of a somewhat lighter, fresher green, rendered 
it quite conspicuous. The bolls were as large as those of the Triumph 
variety, but the plant seemed much less fertile than the parent stock. 
A few seeds that happened to be ripe were saved, not only to test the 
inheritance of the variation, but to learn whether its fertility would be 
increased in subsequent generations. Six plants were raised from 
these seeds at Victoria, Tex., in 1907, all closely similar to each other 
and to the parent plant. The progeny of 1908 still kept closely to the 
parent form, but a report from Mr. John H. Kinsler indicates that the 
fertility is distinctly increased in the third generation. 

Better fortune attended another experiment of the same kind at 
San Antonio. A similar series of selections of divergent plants was 

"A very striking instance of approximation to the KeliChi cotton in a mutation 
of an Upland variety was observed by Mr. F. J. Tyler at Auburn, Ala., in 1907, 
and described by bim in a letter to Mr. F. L. Lewton, under date of October 
15, as follovFS : 

" It is a Guatemalan cotton mixed in with Sunflower long staple. Of course 
it is a mutation or reversion, but it could bardly be more like Kekclii or Pacbon 
as tbey look wben grown in Texas for the first time. It is a large, rounded 
busb filled with sterile limbs, very late, nearly as pubescent as Kekchi and bas 
the little bracts at the sinuses of the involucre. It is just beginning to bloom, 
and there is no hope of obtaining seed, as frost may be expected in a couple of 
weeks. It doesn't resemble Sunfiower in any way, but must be a Sunflower 
plant. In 1905 Professor Duggar selected som^ seed from the best plants of 
Sunflower, and the seed cotton was carefully ginned and put away until this 
spring, so the seed was two years old. They have never had any Guatemalan 
cotton seed here at the station. On each side of this plant in the same row are 
typical Sunflower plants with bolls mostly open. I have taken a couple of 
photographs of the plant." 

The photographs fully confirm Mr. Tyler's statement of the very close simi- 
larity of this mutation to the newly introduced Kekchi cotton. The shape of the 
plant and its method of branching, as well as the shapes, positions, and texture 
of the leaves, appear indistinguishable from those of the Kekchi cotton. 
159 



22 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

made in the season of 1907 in a plot of King cotton. Seven plants 
which seemed to show the most definite individual peculiarities were 
selected, their peculiarities noted, and their seed saved separately to 
see whether the same peculiarities reappeared in the progeny. The 
nature of the differences manifested in the selected individuals and 
the extent to wdiich they appeared in the progeny can best be shown 
by following the original notes made at San Antonio in 1907 and 1908. 

Behavior of original stock. — As a basis of comparison of the 
behavior of the mutations another planting was made in 1908 from 
seed held over from the same stock in which the various mutations 
had appeared. This row grew next to the mutations and consisted of 
very uniform, rather low open plants about 2 to 2| feet high. Only 
one plant seemed to differ in any definite way from the others. It had 
numerous sterile involucres consisting of only one or two bracts. 
There were also many simple leaves and a few with unusually narrow 
lobes. 

Varhint irifh stronrj haml limhs. — The plant selected in 1907 was 
unusually large for that season. It was about 30 inches tall, and 
was also more vigorous and leafy than the average. There were 
3 long, strong, sterile basal limbs and 22 bolls, maturing late. The 
plants were notably larger and stronger than original King, and bore 
a distinctly lai'ger crop of bolls. 

The progeny of this plant in 1908 were very uniform among I hem- 
selves and differed notably from the row of original King in their 
larger size, larger leaves, more compact habits of growth, and stronger 
development of basal limbs. They produced a larger crop of bolls 
and a more uniform quality of lint. They were also larger than the 
parent plant of 1907, but this was generally true in all kinds of cotton 
grown at San Antonio. 

More detailed comparison w^ith the original King row established 
the fact that there were several other differences that had not been 
noted in the individual selection of the previous year. The leaves 
had somewhat longer and more pointed lobes. The lint was notably 
superior to that of the original King row, being longer, more abun- 
dant, and more uniform. The lint was also superior to that of the 
other mutations, though most of these appeared better than the 
original King, perhaps because of a greater degree of uniformity. 

Variant u'ithout hasal limhs. — Selection of 1907 a plant of medium 
size (2 feet tall), with the main stalk naked at the base for 8 inches 
and no sterile basal branches. Leaves relatively few, with shallow 
lobes. 

The progeny of 1908 showed a marked contrast with the preceding 
row, especially in the habits of growth. Instead of the more compact 
form and larger leaves, these plants were much more open and had 

159 



TESTS OF INHERITANCE OF DIVERGENT CHARACTERS. 23 

fewer, smaller leaves. There was a general lack of sterile basal limbs, 
leaving the stalks naked for several inches above the ground. This 
peculiarity was even more obvious than the unusual development of 
such limbs in the preceding row. The greater luxuriance of the 
plants brought, as might have been expected, a greater tendencj^ to 
produce basal limbs than in the parent jDlant of the year before. 
Such branches were present on several of the plants, but to no such 
extent as in any of the other rows. There could be no doubt that the 
form of branching was definitely inherited, following a definite 
variation in this character in the preceding year. 

One plant appeared somewhat diiferent from the others, in having 
more abundant, longer lint and a tall, erect habit, with short fruiting 
branches, most of them Avith onh^ one boll. It also had two strong 
basal limbs, and developed many new vegetative shoots late in the 
season. 

Variant ivlfh numerous prhnari/ limbs. — The plant selected in 
1007 was next to the largest (30 inches tall). There were sterile 
basal branches, but a jirimarv limb developed at nearly every node, 
along with a fertile branch, as in the Kekchi cotton of Guatemala." 
Of the nodes 11 produced 2 branches each. Of the 17 bolls more 
than half were deformed and decayed before ojiening; only 1 perfect 
boll remained. 

The progeny did not follow the parent in the lack of sterile basals, 
but there was a much stronger tendency than usual toward the de- 
velopment of primary limbs. This would naturally be accompanied 
by a smaller development of limbs in plants that were less vigorous, 
like those of last year. Sterile basal branches, or " limbs," come from 
internodes which do not produce fertile branches, because the limbs 
represent transformed fertile branches. 

Compared with the preceding series this row of plants appeared 
quite low, rather spreading, very leafy, and compact. They were 
not quite as uniform as the more upright and taller plants of the 
preceding mutation. The bolls did not appear defective, showing 
that this feature was probably only accidental in the preceding year. 

Variant with compact liabit of growth. — Selection of 1907 a small, 
productive, early, large-boiled plant; 15 inches high; 18 bolls; no 
basal limbs. 

The progeny of 1908 appeared not greatly unlike those of the next 
preceding series, but they averaged distinctly smaller and kept more 

"In the Upland type of cotton the vegetative basal limbs (also called wood 
limbs) can usually be looked upon as modified fruiting branches since they 
arise from extra-axillary buds, as do all the fruiting branches. The axillary 
buds may not develop or may do so only late in the season, but axillary buds 
are always found to produce only vegetative limbs that do not produce fruit 
directly, but may give rise to a new series of fruiting branches. 
159 



24 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

uniformly to the low, compact, leafy form. Later in the season these 
differences appeared still more notable. Most of the plants appeared 
to have strong- lim.bs, but in many cases these were found to arise 
from j:)rimary buds that had started late in the season, instead of 
being transformed fruiting branches, which usually form the " limbs " 
of our United States Upland cottons. Early in September this row 
showed a great abundance of strong new shoots, mgre than any of the 
preceding rows, which still appeared relatively dormant. This might 
be connected with the greater earliness noted in the parent plant. 
The bolls continued distinctlv larger than in original King, but 
mostly because of larger seeds; the lint was only a little better. 

Variant with entire leaves. — Selection of 1907, a sturdy plant, 14 
inches high. No sterile '" limbs," but 3 small primary branches, each 
from a node that also had a fertile secondary. Fertile branches be- 
ginning close to the ground. Bolls 21, larger than usual in King. 

The progeny raised in 1908 appeared closely similar to those of 
the previous selection in the next row in size, habit, and general ap- 
pearance. They differed, however, in the much greater frequency 
of entire leaves, though this feature had not been noted in the parent. 
The habits of branching were much as in the last row. Some of the 
plants had basal limbs formed from sterile secondaries, but many 
of the apparent limbs were true primaries. The lint averaged dis- 
tinctly better than in the last selection and also better than in original 
King, but not as good as in the first mutation. 

Variant with smooth seeds. — Selection of 1907, a large plant, 30 
inches high, with 3 good-sized basal limbs and 21 average King 
bolls. Seeds smooth and black, except for a brown tuft at the beak. 

Progeny of 1908, 30 plants — 5 with smooth seeds, 8 with seeds 
nearly smooth, 10 intermediate, and 7 with fuzzy seeds. The hab- 
its of branching appeared to be quite as varied as the characters of 
the seeds. Axillary limbs were sometimes developed, though many 
plants had none, but had instead two or three large extra-axillary 
limbs. Several of the plants had no limbs except as some of the 
axillary buds had grown out into fresh shoots late in the season. 
This is distinctly different from the behavior of the other rows where 
mature limbs were found at many of the joints, along with the 
fruiting branches. 

Variant with narrow leaves. — The plant selected in 1907 was 
nearly 3 feet high, twice as tall as any other plant in its row. It 
had 2 long, sterile basal branches and narrow-lobed leaves, varying 
from small, entire, and lanceolate to those that were distinctly okra- 
like, deeply cleft into 3 to 5 narrow lobes. There were 7 empty 
involucres, composed of 1 or 2 bracts, and 20 very small late bolls. 

150 



TESTS OF INHERITANCE OF DIVEEGENT CHARACTEES. 25 

The progeny of 1908 consisted of 34 plants, with a general simi- 
larity to the parent in size, habits of growth, and other characters, 
but also with distinct diiferences among themselves. Sterile extra- 
axillary limbs and axillary limbs seemed to be indiscriminately de- 
veloped ; the primary limbs w^ere often as large as the others. Some 
plants had no limbs developed, others no large primaries ; many had 
both kinds of vegetative branches graded in size, the lower axillary 
limbs nearly as large as the extra-axillary limbs. 

The forms of the leaves showed equally definite variation. Of the 
34 i^lants 1 had leaves of an extreme okra type, 13 had leaves of in- 
termediate form but still distinctly okra-like, and all were more 
deeply cut than in Egyptian cotton. Finally there were 20 plants 
with normal broad leaves. In spite of much diversity in the size 
and shape of the leaves of the individual plants this separation of 
the plants into groups appeared to be very definite. Three persons 
picked out independently the same 20 plants as belonging to the 
broad-leaved group, though some of them showed, on careful inspec- 
tion, a prolongation of the lobes beyond anything found in the 
original King roAV. 

The empty involucres of the. parent plant were definitely repre- 
sented by irregular formations of the bracts, especially on the narrow- 
leaved plants. Among the 20 broad-leaved plants several had 
involucres with only 2 bracts more or less distorted and unequal, 
though only 4 had completely sterile bracts. Among the okra-leaved 
j)lants abf)rted buds were much more common, though 4 of the 13 
intermediate plants did not show them. 

In addition to this series, many other mutative variations of King 
and Upland varieties have been tested, with the same general results. 
Some have proved remarkably constant from the first, while others 
show less constancy or readier response to admixture with the parent 
stocks. One of the cluster variations of King, which are of very fre- 
quent occurrence, was tested at San Antonio in 1907, the progeny of a 
very prolific single plant raised at Victoria in the preceding year. 
The progeny showed the cluster habit in a very definite manner and 
were as uniform and as fertile as any other row of King, with the 
possible exception of a San Antonio selection. A few of the plants 
seemed to have definite differences, one having the very small, late- 
maturing bolls that mark a not infrequent form of degenerative 
reversion in many Upland types. It was also noted that the plants 
at the ends of the row, those that had a better supply of water, showed 
the cluster habit more distinctly than other plants more stunted by 
drought. 

720— Bull. 159—09—4 



26 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

DIVERSITY WITHOUT HYBBIDIZATION. 

The relation of these diversities of the King cotton to change of 
conditions is not so definitely established as in the case of the Tri- 
umph, for there was no previous opportunity to observe the degree of 
uniformity attained by the King mider its original conditions. The 
King is also much more inclined than the Triumph to show definite 
forms of diversity, often accompanied by the cluster habit or shorten- 
ing of the branches. On the other hand, this more variable tendency 
of the King gives greater significance to the fact that the variations 
are definitely inherited and do not behave after the manner of 
hybrids, though it is usual to ascribe the diversity of King to cr.re- 
less breeding or to admixture of seed. The fact ought also to be 
taken into account that the King cotton originated in North Carolina 
and is the most northern variety now being planted in Texas. The 
fact that a native Texan variety as uniform as the Triumph is also 
subject to similar diversities ought to be taken into account in at- 
tempting to understand the behavior of King. 

Numerous plantings from the same stock of King seed in Texas 
in different localities and different seasons have shown different 
degrees of diversity. The most extreme instance of diversity was in 
Guatemala, where a planting of King yielded only two or three indi- 
viduals-with the usual characters of the variety. The others were as 
distinctly diverse among themselves as they were different from the 
normal type. The diversity was conspicuously greater than in any 
other United States variety included in the experiment; in fact, it 
exceeded the diversities of all the other Upland varieties taken 
together. While none of our Texas plantings of King has given an 
equal display of diversity, they have given us numerous examples 
of the same kinds of differences in individual plants. Similar facts 
are reported by Dr. D. N. Shoemaker, who has had much experience 
with this variety in Texas. 

The possibility that the peculiarities of the selected plants of King 
cotton were due to hybridization seems to be excluded by the notable 
uniformity with which the peculiarities were repeated in the off- 
spring. Such uniformity in hybrids is quite unknown. If the plants 
selected in 1007 had been first -generation hybrids their offspring of 
1908, representing the second generation, should have displayed a full 
range of the differences of their grandparents. Instead of this, the 
progeny of different selections are often strikingly uniform among 
themselves, though differing notably as groups. 

Such facts do not i^ermit us to doubt that the changes of charac- 
ters aroused in a variety of cotton when grown in new localities are 
of the same nature as the relatively rare mutative variations or 
sports that may appear without transfers to new localities. With 

159 



DIVEESITY WITHOUT HYBRIDIZATION. 27 

greater changes of external conditions there are hirger possibilities of 
arousing diversity. The definite inheritance of these changed charac- • 
ters in the next generation shows that the deterioration of a variety 
through the diversity called forth by a transfer to new conditions is 
not spontaneously corrected, but must be eliminated by new selection. 

A large proportion of the diverse characteristics are not those of 
other recognized varieties, but are such as to render the plants un- 
suited to agricultural purposes — characteristics that would never be 
preserved by selection in an agricultural variety. Thus the small- 
boiled, late-maturing plants which appeared in considerable numbers 
in the Triumph field at Kerrville,'Tex., were quite unlike any of our 
Upland varieties of cotton, though they are very similar to the dwarf, 
depauperate forms that occur very frequently during the period of 
acclimatization of the Kekchi and other Central American relatives 
of our Upland cottons. 

While such facts do not show that hybridization may not have 
taken place farther back in the history of a variety, they show that 
the possession of the diverse characteristics is not to be explained by 
the theory of hybridization alone ; the existence and continued trans- 
mission of characters not regularly expressed in our agricultural va- 
rieties has to be recognized. To account for all diversities by hybridi- 
zation is to assume that there was an original, ancestral condition of 
uniformity when all the members of the stock had one and the same 
set of characters, and that this ancestral set of characters would have 
remained uniform if no hybridization liad occurred. As soon as we 
recognize that diversity, rather than uniformity, represents the origi- 
nal condition there is less necessity to resort to remote possibilities of 
hybridization when diversities appear. 

The tendency of many different types of cotton to show repeated 
mutations of the same kind or in parallel directions is an interesting 
phenomenon that has alread}^ been recognized in other j^lants by 
Mr. W. W. Tracy, sr., of the Bureau of Plant Industry. Mr. Tracy's 
extensive acquaintance with many varieties of garden vegetables has 
convinced him that there are general tendencies to variation run- 
ning through whole natural orders of plants quite independent of 
the characters that have been used as the basis of selection in 
developing useful varieties. 

The different plants of the same natural order tend to vary along parallel 
lines. Fruit of the variety of tomatoes known as Early Conqueror, those of 
the pepper known as Squash or Tomato-Shaped, and of the Scarlet-Fruited 
eggplant could be selected, which would be as much alike in form as fruits 
from a single plant of any one of them ; and I have seen a *' potato ball " of 
the same form. I have found fruits of squash, muskmelon, watermelon, and 
cucumber each having the peculiar forms and markings generally confined 
to one of the others. Thus, last year, I found a plant of watermelon whose 

159 



28 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

fruit was distinctly warted, and in form would pass for a fairly typical one 
of Summer Crookneck squash. I liave seen muskmelons as flat and deeply 
scalloped as a fair sample of White Bush Scalloped squash — squashes as well 
netted and distinctly ribbed as a Bay View muskmelon. And it is taste and 
usefulness rather than limitation of variant tendency which determines the 
common shapes of these vegetables. I believe that hybridization is often 
credited with variation which is due to this common variant tendency. 

Thus, the Lima bean, originally a climbing plant, continued so for many 
years, during which time several distinct races were developed, but no dwarf 
form appeared ; then, within three years, dwarf forms of all the different racial 
types appeared, and in several different places simultaneously. The sweet pea, 
cultivated for many years and closely watched by many enthusiasts, gave 
only climbing plants until 1892. when the " Cupids," or dwarf forms, appeared 
in at least three locations and different stocks and five individuals, and since 
then they have appeared in a great many different stocks and places, and 
often where there could not have been pollen influence to induce the sport. 
In most vegetables, if any new form, no matter how distinct from those com- 
monly cultivated, appears in one stock and place, there is almost a certainty 
that practically identical variations will appear elsewhere. For instance, the 
Navy Blue sweet pea was a very new and distinct shade and appeared in the 
fields of two cultivators the same year, the only discernible difference in the 
two sports being that the seed of one had a greater tendency to skin-crack than 
that of the other. This tendency to sport into new forms developing in the 
species rather than in any particular stock is often the cause of much annoy- 
ance to seedsmen, two or more of them being accused of sending out a new 
form under different names, when each supposed that he had the only origina- 
tion of that type." 

While the theory of hybridization does not enable us to explain 
these parallel tendencies of mutations, they are not in conflict with 
the idea of a persistent transmission of ancestral diversities. The 
occurrence of similar variations like the small-boiled cotton plants 
through a whole series of diverse varieties is itself a reason for 
believing that this characteristic i.s present in the ancestry of many 
different kinds of cotton. Vigilant selection is able to prevent the 
continued expression of this character in any of our improved varie- 
ties, but it does not appear that there is any way of preventing this 
characteristic from reappearing in occasional mutative variations. 
The small-boiled character in cotton may be compared to the red 
ears of corn that continue to apj^ear even in our most carefully 
selected varieties, or to the black sheep that appear occasionally in 
the most careful pedigreed stocks that are known to have been bred 
for large numbers of generations without the preservation of a single 
black individual. 

It is not necessary to suppose that all of the forms of diversity 
that appear without hj^bridization are in the nature of reversions or 
reappearances of characters of remote ancestors. Many of the pecu- 
liarities of mutations may be viewed as examples of the suppression 

"Tracy, W. W., sr. Variant Tendency and Individual Prepotency in Garden 
Vegetables. Memoirs of the New York Horticultural Society, vol. 1, p. 76. 1902. 
159 



DIVEESITY WITHOUT HYBRIDIZATION. 29 

of characters. Characters that continue to be transmitted may sud- 
denly fail to come into exjDression. If the normal color of a plant 
or animal depends on the formation of a green or black pigment in 
the cells the failure to jDroduce this pigment results in the formation 
of an albino. Large numbers of white varieties exist among animals, 
for in these organisms the pigment is not indispensable, but plants 
can not grow without their green pigments, or chlorophyll, unless 
they are parasites or saprophytes. Albino seedlings occur, as in the 
Voorhees Red variety of sweet corn, but never grow to maturity." 
When albinism is limited to stripes or spots the plants may survive, 
as in ornamental varieties with variegated foliage. 

The process of leaf development requires a' very fine adjustment 
of the processes of growth among the different kinds of cells that 
form the upper and lower surfaces. If these adjustments are dis- 
turbed the plants are unable to develop leaves with even surfaces, 
but produce leaves that are irregularly crumpled or swollen out 
between the veins (bullate). Such irregularities in the formation 
of leaves are a frequent characteristic of mutations in many dif- 
ferent families of j^lants, as in cotten, coffee, tomatoes, and cap- 
sicum. They are also characteristic of many varieties of lettuce and 
cabbage. 

It is likewise apparent that the symmetrical building up of regu- 
larly columnar internodes or joints of the stems of plants recpiires 
nice adjustments of the process of growth. If heredity becomes dis- 
turbed so that normally straight internodes are not formed, the stems 
of the plants are miable to maintain their usual upright position, but 
can only trail along the ground or droop. This trailing or drooping 
tendency, like the bullate leaves, is a frequent characteristic of nuita- 
tions of plants that usually have upright habits of growth. Numer- 
ous instances of prostrate cotton plants have been observed, and the 
same tendency is shown among the variant forms in many other 
families of plants. 

Internodes may also become abnormal by failure to develop to a 
normal length, as in our " cluster " and " limbless " varieties of 
cotton. Such varieties of cotton apparently correspond directly to 
the bush varieties of beans, squashes, and dwarf peas mentioned by 
Mr. Tracy, and afford another instance of a familiar form of muta- 
tive change that extends through many different families of plants. 
The shortening of the internodes in cotton is usually confined to the 
extra-axillary branches that bear the fruit, and does not affect the 
axillary vegetative branches which share the functions of the central 
stalk. 

"Halsted, B. J). Experiments in Crossings Sweet Corn. Bulletin 170, New 
Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, p. 19. 1904. 
159 



30 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VAEIETIES. 

INCREASED YIELDS FROM LOCAL ADJUSTMENT. 

To ascertain the amount of injury to the crop that might come 
from these changes of characters under new conditions, as distin- 
guished from really unfavorable factors of climate or soil, adjacent 
plantings were made of seed raised and selected in the new place in 
the previous vear and of other seed from the same original stocks of 
seed held over from the same lots, from which the previous year's 
planting had been made. Very definite differences were found in such 
plantings, showing that the selection of seed from plants that do not 
show changes of characters in the first year secures more uniform 
progeny in the second year. It is easier to understand this if we 
recognize the fact that the planting of a variety in a new place is 
in the nature of a test of the stability of the characters of the differ- 
ent individuals under the new conditions. The fact that the changes 
of characters are definitely repeated is itself a reason for expecting 
that the plants that do not change their characters in the first year 
will also have less tendency to changes of characters in the second 
year, and this seems to be the fact, at least with the Triumph cotton 
and some other varieties that have been tested in the same series of 
experiments. 

The differences between the first-year and second-year plantings 
at Kerrville in the season of 1907 were in every case in fa.vor of the 
second-year planting over the first, though the advantage gained in 
some of the varieties was much greater than with others. The Haw- 
kins variety showed 5 per cent. King 9, Cook's Improved 11, Tri- 
umph 18, Parker 26, and McCall 33. In the case of the Triumph 
the actual yield from the Kerrville-grown seed was 37 per cent 
in excess of the yield from seed of the same original lot planted for 
the first time, but the stand of the latter was not complete, so that 
the percentage had to be estimated. The average rate of increase 
favoring the Kerrville-grown seed was 10.4 per cent. It was also 
plain before the cotton was picked that the second-year rows were 
superior in the size and fertility of the plants, especially in the cases 
of the Triumph and Parker varieties. The rows contained about 
50 plants each and yielded seed cotton in amounts of from 3 to G 
pounds. These rows were alternated in such a manner that no 
inequalities of conditions could be supposed to have unduly influenced 
the results. The second-year rows were better whether they were 
above or below the first -year rows on the gentle slope where this series 
of plantings was made. 

The careful comparison of rows of plants grown close together 
gives the best opportunities of ascertaining their inherent dijfferences. 
With cotton grown under field conditions it is impossible to protect 

159 



OTHER TESTS OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT. 31 

large numbers of plants against inequalities of soil. In this experi- 
ment at Kerrville, for example, it was very evident that the com- 
parison of larger plots would have given much more unequal results. 
The Triumph cotton in the row tests was distinctly superior to the 
Triumph cotton grown in the closely adjacent field planting on the 
land which would have been used if a system of large plots had been 
employed to test the yields on a more extensive scale. Even on the 
level prairies of Texas the texture and composition of the soil is 
often extremely irregular, and the plants often reveal the existence 
of serious differences not visible before. The experiments suggest 
that the most satisfactory way of nudving yield tests of cotton in 
Texas is to plant two kinds in repeated alternation so that the 
inequalities between rows of the same kind can be compared with 
those of rows of different kinds. The same standard, locally adjusted 
variety may be used as a basis of comparison for different tests, but 
only by growing it in each case with the variety to be tested. Such 
yield tests ought to be made quite apart from breeding experiments, 
for the amount of cross-fertilization is likely to be very large. 

It was noticed by Mr. F. L. Lewton in 190G that the Hawkins and 
McCall varieties succeeded much better at Kerrville than in any of 
the other points in Texas where experiments were made. This fact 
may indicate that the Kerrville conditions were more similar than 
those of other localities to the home of these varieties in Georgia 
and South Carolina. Normal behavior of a variety in a new place 
means that the gain from local adjustment would be small, as proved 
to be the case with the Hawkins variety with respect to the yield, 
though the lint was distinctly better in the second generation at 
Kerrville. 

A fairly satisfactory measure of the yield can be obtained by count- 
ing the numbers of bolls on the plants, without waiting for the actual 
picking of the cotton. First-year plants at Del Rio, Tex., showed on 
September 8, 1908, an average of ()8 bolls per plant, while second-year 
plants at the same place had an average of 88 bolls. The counting of 
the bolls before they are ripe may not be a safe index of the crop, for 
the plants are often unable to ripen all the bolls that are set. but there 
is no obvious objection to the use of the number of bolls as a measure 
of the tendency to fertility from the standpoint of local adjustment. 

OTHER TESTS OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT. 

In addition to the decrease of diversity and the increase of yield, 
several other standards for judging the progress of a variety toward 
local adjustment have been suggested by facts observed in these 
experiments. 

159 



32 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VAKIETIES. 

Wliile the yield is the most important test of local adjustment, it 
has not proved very convenient in connection with our experiments, 
because of the necessity in most j^laces of making two or more pick- 
ings if all of the cotton is to be secured. Some varieties are likely 
to lose much more cotton than others if the crop is allowed to stand 
too long before it is gathered, and even in the same variety the earlier 
rii^ening of a locally adjusted row might result in an apparent lessen- 
ing of the crop if stormy weather '' scattered " some of the lint from 
the earliest bolls. 

IMPROVED QUALITY OF FIBER. 

The effect of local adjustment on the quality of the fiber is some- 
times quite as striking as the general superiority of the plants in 
uniformity and yield. In the Kerrville experiments, where the in- 
creased yields were obtained from the locally adjusted rows, there 
was also a very distinct gain in the quality of the fiber. The method 
followed in judging of this improvement was to compare each plant 
of a row grown from Kerrville seed Avith its nearest neighbor in a 
row grown from the same original stock of seed held over for such 
experiments. 

In some of the varieties the differences between the rows that 
represented first and second plantings of exactly the same stock were 
very striking, almost all the plants of the second-year rows showing 
better lint than those of the first-year row^s. This was true particu- 
larly in the King, McCall, and Hawkins varieties, but in the Parker 
rows there was so little difference in the quality of the lint that the 
superiority of the second-year row appeared doubtful. In the McCall 
and Hawdvins rows it was noticed that the plants in which the cluster 
habit w^as most pronounced never had long and abundant lint. On 
the other hand, such plants were often distinctly inferior, with only 
short and sparse lint. 

INCREASED EARLINESS. 

Increased earliness is an important factor in its bearing upon the 
yield to be obtained in regions infested with the boll weevil. It is 
quite possible that the larger yields of locally adjusted varieties at. 
Kerrville were due, at least in part, to greater earliness, which allowed 
them to mature and to set more bolls before the boll weevil became 
destructively numerous. It is possible, however, to test the question 
of earliness apart from the question of yield by observing the times 
when the plants begin to flower or the bolls begin to open. Countings 
were made at Del Eio, Tex., in 1907, of the numbers of open bolls on 
first and second year plantings as a means of determining whether 

159 



OTHER TESTS OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT. 33 

there had been a gain in earliness in maturity of bolls. Though the 
conditions at Del Rio were distinctly less favorable than at Kerrville 
for the display of local adjustment differences, the second-year rows 
showed larger proportions of open bolls at the date of our visit, Sep- 
tember 30. 

In the King variety a first-year row of 22 plants showed an average 
of 11.6 open bolls to the plant, while a row of 20 second-year plants 
gave an average of 12.8 open bolls. In the Hawkins variety 24 first- 
year plants had an average of 5.8 open bolls, while in the second-year 
row the average was 6.9. In the Parker variety the average for 25 
first-year plants was 9.2 open bolls, while for 22 second-year plants 
the average was 11.4. In the first-year Triumph row only 8 plants 
had survived, but these gaA^e a higher average, 9.37, of open bolls than 
16 second-year plants, whose average was 6.06. In this case it ap- 
peared that unfavorable conditions had not only reduced the numbers 
of the plants and stunted their growth, but had also brought about 
a premature opening of the bolls on some of the plants that remained. 
Two of the first-year plants had 16 and 17 open bolls, respectively, 
whereas the two highest plants of the second-year series had only 
15 and 16 bolls. Both these rows of Triumph were very much inferior 
to a third row, representing a selection made at Victoria in the pre- 
ceding year, which showed at the same date an average of 15.75 open 
bolls per plant. In the season of 1908 countings of first-year Parker 
plants at Del Rio showed an average of 8.8 open bolls, while an ad- 
joining second-year row gave an average of 13.5. 

For the benefit of those who may wish to make special selections 
for earliness in view of the advantage of early cotton in avoiding 
injury from the boll weevil, it ma}' be well to notice the fact that there 
are several different factors of earliness that have different values 
in relation to the boll weevil. Early opening of flowers or of ripe bolls 
is not the form of earliness that is most needed as a protection against 
the boll weevil. The essential factor is the earl}- setting of the bolls 
and prompt development to mature size, beyond the danger of weevil 
injury. Experiments with Central American varieties of cotton have 
shown that there are great differences in the readiness with which the 
different types open their bolls. In some varieties the bolls are opened 
as soon as they are mature, while in others the mature bolls may be 
held without any apparent change for a considerable period without 
opening. Some of the East Indian varieties of cotton do not open 
their bolls, the cotton being shelled out by hand after the bolls have 
been gathered. After a boll has passed the period of susceptibility tO' 
weevil injury there is no particular advantage in having it open early. 
The cotton of very early bolls is likely to be lost or damaged unless 
the number of pickings is increased. 
720— Bull 159—09 5 



34 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTOX VAEIETIES. 

The influence of local adjustment upon earline&s is increased by the 
fact that the number of bolls that can be produced early in the season 
is directh^ dependent on the method of branching followed by the 
plant. The main stalk of the cotton plant produces two distinct 
kinds of branches, the fertile branches that bear the bolls and the 
vegetative branches that produce other fertile branches, but no bolls. 
If the young plants begin the formation of vegetative branches in- 
stead of fertile branches there is a definite postponement of fruiting, 
for no flower buds can be set until the fertile branches are formed. 
The study of the new-place diversities shows that changes in the 
methods of branching are one of the most frequent forms of variation. 

LARGER BOLLS. 

Progressive increases in the sizes of the bolls have been found by 
Mr. F. L. Lewton in successive plantings of cotton representing 
different generations of the same original stock in the same locality. 
In the Parker cotton raised at Winfield, Kans., in 1908, a ten-boll 
sample of seed cotton produced by a first planting weighed 55 grams, 
the ten bolls representing the second season at Winfield weighed 65.8 
grams, while ten of the third season weighed 72.9 grams. The 
Hawkins variety showed 58.8 grams for the ten-boll sample of the 
first season, 53.8 for the second, and 61 for the third. In the Tri- 
umph and McCall varieties it Avas possible to compare the bolls only 
for the second and third seasons, but in both cases there seemed to be 
a distinct increase, in the Triumph from 95.6 to 99.2, and in the 
McCall, 53.4 to 63.5. The proportions of 4-locked and 5-locked bolls 
were so nearly equal in these samples that this factor can not explain 
the results. 

LARGER PROPORTIOXS OF FIVE-LOCKED BOLLS. 

Experiments in the acclimatization of types of cotton new to the 
United States have shown that the number of locks in the bolls is 
often greatly reduced in the first planting and gradually returns to 
normal proportions as acclimatization proceeds. The most striking 
example of this fact was brought to my attention at Falfurrias, Tex., 
by Mr. Kowland M. Meade. Countings of the bolls of 42 of the 
Kekchi plants showed a total of 42 three-locked bolls, 202 four-locked 
bolls, and 6 five-locked bolls. On the other hand, T plants of an 
acclimatized stock of Kekchi cotton grown close by yielded 5 three- 
locked, 81 four-locked, and 91 five-locked bolls. In the acclimatized 
stock about half of the bolls, 51 per cent, had five locks, a proportion 
similar to that of our United States Upland varieties, while in the 
1)] anting of imported seed the 5-locked bolls had been reduced to less 
than 3 per cent. 

159 



AGE OF SEED AND DIFFEEENCE OF CROPS. 35 

Similar tendencies toward a reduction of the numbers of locks in 
varieties grown in new places have been shown in our United States 
Upland varieties, though to a very much slighter extent, as might be 
expected. Countings of locks of Parker cotton made by Mr. C. B. 
Doyle at Del Eio, Tex., in 1908, gave an average of 31 five-locked 
bolls per plant in a first-year row and 47 per plant on the second-year 
row, while the 4-locked bolls had advanced only from 32 to 11. 

AGE OF SEED AND DIFFERENCE OF CROPS. 

The method of testing the second and third generations of a variety 
of cotton in a new place has been to compare these generations with 
plantings of the same original stock of seed held over for this purpose. 
While it is difficult to see how a direct test could be made in any other 
Avay the plan might be open to objection if it could be shown that 
plants raised from old seeds were more diverse than those that come 
from seeds raised in the previous year. Though no formal test of the 
relation of age of seed to diversity has been made, it may be said that 
neither from our experiments w^ith cotton nor from what is known 
regarding other plants is there anj- indication that old seeds are likely 
to yield more diverse progeny' than are new seeds. 

The evidence, such as it is, seems to be more favorable to the 
opposite idea that less diversity appears in plants raised from old 
seed. Our nearest aj^proach to a definite test was at Kerrville, Tex., 
in 1907, where a row test with old Lockhart seed of Triumph cotton 
stood adjacent to a field planted with new seed from Lockhart. The 
jjlants raised from the old seed appeared distinctly better and more 
uniform than those from the new, though the experiments were not 
of such a character as to completely exclude the possibility of influ- 
ence from differences of soils or dates of planting. 

It has also happened in several of our experiments with the Central 
American types of cotton that seed 2 or 3 years old gave more fertile 
plants than had been secured from the first plantings of the same 
stocks in the same places. Though the possibility that more favorable 
seasons may be responsible for these differences is not to be excluded, 
the better results from the old seeds are at least Avorthy of note. If 
the undesirable diversity can be avoided or diminished by merely 
holding over old seed, an advantage might be gained in the acclima- 
tization or local adjustment of varieties. 

It seems rather remarkable that this question of differences between 
old and new seed has not been more carefully tested. The idea that 
old seeds are better, at least in the sense of being likely to yield more 
uniformly productive plants, is firmly established in the popular 
mind, especially among growers and dealers in the seeds of melons 
and cruciferous jDlants. The difficulty is to distinguish between the 



36 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

130ssible influence of the factor of age and that of the factor of 
clitference between crops of seed of the same variety. 

It is stated by Mr. AV. W. Tracy, sr., that seed dealers often come 
to recognize particuhir crops of seed as setting standards of excellence 
which later generations of the same stocks are not able to attain. A 
particular crop of seed of a variet}'^ of Savo}^ cabbage which came 
under the personal observation of Mr. Trac}' gave progen}^ of greater 
and more uniform excellence than any other stock of seed that could 
be secured, not excepting the seeds grown from progeny of this same 
original lot, even when grown in the same field. The second genera- 
tion, or grandchildren, was never equal to the first generation that 
came from the special stock of seed." 

Whether the retention of the later lots of seeds to an equal age 
would have given them the same excellence w^as not determined. 
Indeed, such a test would be very difficult in view of the fact that 
differences of age could never be equalized. Even though the popular 
idea of the superiorit};' of old seed should be found to rest on the 
superiority of particular crops the continued excellence of these 
superior crops would still show that the increased age of the seed 
should not be supposed to make the progeny more diverse. It is to 
be expected that different crops of Triumph cotton raised at Lockhart 
might show differences of behavior at Kerrville, or even at Lockhart, 
but there is no reason to believe that this factor is of serious impor- 
tance in comparison with local adjustment. The amount of diversity 
that appears at Kerrville is out of all proportion to the diversity that 
appears at Lockhart. 

A similar idea, that uniformity increases with the age of the stock, 
is said to exist among breeders of new varieties of footatoes, who 
believe that bud variations are much more likely to occur in new 
varieties recently developed from seedlings than in old, long- 
established varieties.^ 

" " Seed of the same stock and equally well grown, by the same cnltivator, 
in the same location, diffei' in the variant tendency and the degree to which their 
product will be of the desired type in different seasons. The crop of seed of 
Green Globe Savoy cabbage produced by a certain grower in 1893 gave much 
more evenly typical plants and heads than any subsequent crop produced by 
him of the same strain, though he took the greatest care in selecting stock and 
growing the plants, even setting them in the same field that gave the superior 
crop. I have known a practical seedsman, one not likely to waste money on a 
mere theory, to pay treble the market price for a certain strain of peas pro- 
duced by him four years before, though he had an abundance of seed of the same 
strain grown by himself in succeeding years — none of these later crops giving 
such good results as seed of that particular season." See Tracy, W. W., sr., 
~\'ariant Tendency and Individual Prepotency in Garden Vegetables, in Memoirs 
of the New York Horticultural Society, vol. 1, p. 77, 1902. 

^ East, E. M. A Study of the Factors Influencing the Improvement of the 
Potato. Bulletin 127, Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station. 1908. 
159 



METHODS OF TESTING COTTON VARIETIES. 37 

Still further back, we find a similar idea in the theories and methods 
applied by the Belgian horticulturist Van Mons to the breeding of 
pears and other fruits a century ago. Van Mons made a practice of 
sowing the seeds of the first fruits of his seedlings, which were sup- 
posed to deviate more readily from the parental type than seedlings 
obtained from mature trees. Though horticulturists admit that Van 
Mons was able in this way to produce a large number of superior 
varieties, some of which are still popular, the value of the system 
has remained in doubt. Some have believed that it did produce a 
rapid amelioration as claimed, while others have ascribed the results 
to accidental hybridization as likely to be of frequent occurrence in 
his gardens, where large numbers of different types of fruits were 
crowded together with no protection against cross-fertilization by 
insects. 

To explain the supposed worthlessness of the seedlings of old and 
sujDerior sorts, Van Mons advanced the idea that the improvement had 
distinct limits and then suffered a sudden and complete decline. This 
idea appears to have been based largely on the inferiority of seedlings 
of some famous old southern varieties which had been carried into 
more northern regions. It is quite conceivable from the standpoint 
of the behavior of cotton that the change of conditions might render 
the seedlings of southern varieties inferior to those that Van Mons 
was able to derive from native Belgian stocks. A statement made by 
Downing in his discussion of Van Mons, that there was a marked and 
unexpected decline in the quality of seedlings raised by colonists in 
Kew England, also suggests the possibility that factors of acclimatiza- 
tion and local adjustment may have to be considered in the breeding 
of fruits as well as in annual crops." 

METHODS OF TESTING COTTON VARIETIES. 

Failure to take into account the factor of local adjustment may 
vitiate any test of varieties. A new variety not really superior, but 
carefully selected and locally adjusted, may appear to be better than 
a really superior old variety, if the seed of the latter is brought in 
from a distance and the comparison is made without the precaution 
of local adjustment. Conversely, a really superior variety brought 
into a new place may suffer by comparison with inferior stocks Avhich 
have the advantage of better local adjustment. 

^ " The first colonists liere, wlio brought with them many seeds gathered from 
the best old varieties of fruits, were surprised to find their seedlings producing 
only very inferior fruits. These seedlings had returned by their inherent 
tendency almost to a wild state. By rearing from them, however, seedlings 
of many repeated generations, we have arrived at a great number of the finest 
apples, pears, peaches, and plums." See Downing, A. J., The Fruits and Fruit 
Trees of America, 1845, p. 7. 
159 



38 LOCAL ADJL'STMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

It is not safe to assume that any single planting can determine 
whether a neAv variety is suited to any particular set of local condi- 
tions. The only evidence that first plantings can give us is to show 
the extent to which new conditions can disturb the usual expression 
of characters of varieties. 

The failure of tests of cotton varieties to yield practical results 
does not arise from any difficulty in finding differences between the 
behavior of different varieties of cotton when planted side by side. 
The trouble usually is that differences are too great and too frequent. 
A variety which in one year appears to be among the best may appear 
in the next year among the worst. The experimenter gains the 
impression that varieties of cotton have an extreme sensibility, not 
only to local differences, but to seasonal changes. This appearance of 
very gxeat delicacy of adjustment makes testing appear almost in 
vain, especially in regions where the seasons are capricious, as in 
Texas. The experimenter gains no confidence in the uniformity of 
his results and is unable to give the farmer the practical advice that 
he desires. 

The need of making allowances for local adjustment shows that 
any practical test must require at least two or three years before we 
can hope to ascertain whether a new variety is really well adapted 
to local conditions or not. . Nor is it reasonable to suppose that the 
mere repetition of the usual tests for two or three years will furnish 
the desired information regarding the value of varieties. To make 
the test effective the experimenter must be acquainted with the normal 
form and methods of growth of the varieties so that he can select the 
plants that best conform to the varietal standards. It is onl}^ by the 
selection of the plants that fail to be disturbed by the new conditions 
that the possibilities of the variety can be ascertained. 

The recurrence of diversity in a variety as a result of new condi- 
tions has some of the same effects as hybridization. The stock is no 
longer " pure," in the sense that it no longer yields uniform progeny. 
As the plants .that have undergone definite changes of characters now 
differ in the same Avay as distinct varieties, a stock containing such 
mutations can no longer be said to represent a single variety; it has 
become a mixture of varieties and of crosses between them. Just as 
we would not think of beginning a variety test b}^ mixing our seeds, 
so we ought not to consider that we can make a fair test of any 
variety after it has split up into other varieties. 

The behavior of a vanety in new places may very properly be 
tested from the standpoint of new-place variation to learn the nature, 
number, and extent of the changes that occur, and the practicability 
of avoiding them by acclimatization and local adjustment. Not until 
local adjustment has been accomplished, so that a variety behaves 

159 



METHODS OF TESTING COTTON VARIETIES. 39 

with a normal degree of iiniforinit}^, does it become possible to make 
an adequate final test of the variety — a test which determines whether 
the variety is really adapted to the conditions and is really better or 
worse than other varieties also adjusted to the conditions. 

It may be that some relation can be discovered so that we can 
judge from the first behavior of a variety what its later behavior 
will be. It appears reasonable, on the surface, to suppose that a 
variety which shows many changes in a new place will continue to 
be less stable than another variety that behaves much more normally 
in the first year. But a little further thought robs us of even this 
logical assurance, for it is easy to understand that the behavior of a 
variety in a new place may have more relation to the place from 
which the variety has come than to its inherent possibilties of becom- 
ing adjusted to the new place. A variety brought from similar 
conditions, so as not to be upset by the transfer, might appear at 
first distinctly superior to another variety which had not had any 
previous opportunity to gain adjustment to such conditions. 

To judge from indications of the first season it would have ap- 
peared quite hopeless to expect any normal behavior from some of 
our imported varieties wliich showed complete changes of habits of 
growth and became almost completely sterile. And yet these same 
varieties have later returned to normal characteristics and fertility. 
In view of such facts it would seem that the minor aberrations of 
our domestic varieties can hardly be taken seriously as indications of 
special, exclusive adaptation to the conditions in which they happen 
to have been bred. These Avider possibilities of adaptation give new 
importance to the testing of varieties, though at the same time they 
appear to greatly increase the difficulty of the work. 

Not only must the tests be maintained for longer periods, but this 
very fact multiplies another element of difficulty, namely, that of 
protecting the varieties against admixture by cross-pollination while 
the tests are being made. This danger differs in different regions 
with the numbers of insects that visit the flowers, but in many locali- 
ties it is quite unreasonable to suppose that a variety will remain pure 
after it has been grown for two or three years in close proximity to 
other kinds of cotton. 

Thus it seems necessary to admit that very little practical impor- 
tance can be attached to either of the two systems of testing cotton 
varieties that have been depended upon in the past. The farmer's 
planting of a small amount of seed of a new variety can not be 
relied upon to give him any true idea of the value of the variety, 
or even to place him in adequate possession of the variety. Xeither 
does the assembling of a large number of varieties by the experi- 
menter for tests of yields enable him to decide which is the best 
stock, even for the region in which the experiment is made. 

159 



40 LOCAL ADJUSTMEIs^T OF COTTON VAKIETIES. 

A first application of the facts of local. adjustment in the testing 
of cotton varieties has been made in connection with the Central 
American and JMexican types recently introduced because of their 
weevil-resisting adaptations. Astonishing claims of superiority for 
the new varieties could have been made if we had waited until accli- 
matization had been completed and then tested them in comparison 
with United States Upland varieties which had not been locally ad- 
justed to the places where the imported varieties had been acclima- 
tized. The differences are much less striking when the imported 
varieties are compared with the best of our Upland stocks which 
have received the same selective attention that the new types have 
had, and in the same places. Nevertheless, if the new sorts con- 
tinue to hold their own or to excel under such circumstances their 
general use can be advised with much better justification. 

If the imported varieties had been distributed for general plant- 
ing without these more thorough tests and without taking the facts 
of local adjustment into account, the result would doubtless have 
been the same as in many other instances where new varieties of 
plants in the hands of the practical farmer or gardener fail to show 
the distinct superiority claimed by those who have originated or im- 
2)orted them. Such discrep'ancies are commonly explained as due to 
misrepresentation by the dealer or to the overenthusiasm of the 
breeder, but the phenomena of local adjustment show that differences 
of this kind may also have a basis of actual fact. 

METHODS OF INTRODUCING NEW VARIETIES. 

The bearing oif local adjustment on the introduction of new 
varieties is quite as serious as upon methods of testing varieties. Xo 
matter how superior a variety may appear in one locality, where it 
may have been carefully bred and adequately tested, it is not safe to 
assume that it will show its superiority in other regions until it has 
passed through the process of local adjustment. Nor is it any 
longer possible to believe that the farmer can ascertain the true 
value of a new variety by the traditional method of making a small 
trial planting and saving the seed of this to use in later years for 
general crop purposes. 

The facts of local adjustment show us that the first planting of 
even a carefully selected high-grade variety in a new place is likely 
to result in an immediate deterioration of from 10 to 20 per cent in 
the yield, and as much, or more, in the qualit3\ Unless this deteriora- 
tion is avoided by removing the changed individuals from the stock, 
subsequent generations may be expected to show a gradually increas- 
ing deviation from the standards of the variety. 

159 



METHODS OF INTRODUCING NEW VARIETIES, 41 

Unless the farmer takes special precautions to isolate his new 
variety, which he is not likely to undertake for a small sample of 
seed, and may be unable to accomplish at all when his neighbors are 
growing other kinds of cotton, the new stock will be badly infected 
with hybrids by the time he has multiplied it and secured enough 
seed for regular field plantings. And if, on the other hand, the 
farmer does isolate his new cotton he will not be able to make a direct 
comx^arison with the variety he has previously grown. 

And even if the farmer succeeds in avoiding mixture of pollen by 
insects, there is still to be encountered the almost equally serious diffi- 
culty of avoiding mixture of seed at the gin. It is difficult to imagine 
a system that would more effectiveh' conspire against the mainte- 
nance of j)ure-bred varieties of cotton than our American cotton gin, 
where the seed from each farmer is likely to receive an admixture from 
any other farm or from many farms together. Unless the farmer 
takes the unusual pains to see that the gin machinery is thoroughly 
cleaned out before his special stock is ginned, he has no reason to 
expect that his new variety will escape admixture, no matter what 
his previous precautions may have been. And to have even the op- 
portunity to have the gin cleaned, he will usually be compelled to 
store his cotton till the end of the season. 

These difficulties will in general conspire to prevent any real test 
of a new type of cotton, for by the time this test can be made the 
variety will have become seriously deteriorated, both by variation 
and hybridization. In addition to this, it is to be recognized that 
even if an individual farmer were to take the necessary precautions 
of carefully selecting and isolating his new stock, the prospects of 
his being able to secure any direct advantage from his efforts would 
still be very unfavorable. Unless he is a very large producer, and is 
thus able to market his crop separately, he is not likely to secure any 
advance in j)rice. Ordinary buyers would not give him a better price 
than they were giving his neighbor Avho had made no improvement in 
the quality of the product. 

Thus it appears that an entirely different system of introducing 
new varieties of cotton is needed if their full value is to be secured 
for the farmer. The work must be planned from the standpoint of 
whole communities, instead of from that of individual farmers. The 
seed must first be locally adjusted to the new place and must be grown 
exclusively in the region if it is to be protected from mixing with 
other varieties. If the full value of improved strains is to be gained, 
whole communities must unite in their production, so as to supply 
sjDecial markets or to secure special attention in the trade. 

The present multiplicity of cotton varieties is recognized as a very 
unfortunate condition from the commercial standpoint, as well as 
from the agricultural. A very large proportion of the varieties are 

159 



42 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VAEIETIES. 

known only in restricted regions, to Avhich tliey are supposed to be- 
specially adapted. Reasons for this opinion have been found in the 
fact that these local favorites often fail to distinguish themselves 
■when carried to other districts and yet are able to hold their own at 
home, even in comparison with high-grade varieties from other places. 

While it is certainly to be expected that cotton varieties, like other 
kinds of plants, are really different in their adaptive characters, so 
that some are better suited than others to a particular set of condi- 
tions, the facts of local adjustment show us that it would be very 
easy to overestimate these special adaptations. Xot until a ncAv va- 
riety has reached the condition of local adjustment can the question 
of special adaptation to the local conditions be fairly tested, as has 
been seen in the preceding chapter. And until the importance of the 
factor of adaptation has been determined in this way we can not be 
sure that there is any practical necessity for the present multiplicity 
of varieties. 

The number of varieties is increasing annually through the efforts 
of seedsmen to satisfy the popular demands for novelties, Superior 
new varieties should be welcomed, of course, but there is seldom any 
general agreement that the new varieties are better than the old. 
Though often widel}^ disseminated by advertising, they are seldom 
able to supplant the old in any complete manner. No progress is 
made toward the desirable policy of uniformity for the whole com- 
munity. 

From present indications it appears quite possible that the factor 
of local adjustment may often prove to be larger than the factor of 
special adaptation. If this should be the case, much may be gained 
by extending a few of the best varieties over larger areas and dis- 
couraging the cultivation of all of the local varieties that can be re- 
placed wdth others that are as good or better. Varieties that have an 
essential superiority will tend, of course, to maintain themselves and 
to spread into adjoining districts from the center where their supe- 
riority is definitely recognized. The problem is to facilitjate such ex- 
tension of good varieties by more definite determinations of their 
value in the outlying regions. A local variety called ^ Beat All,"" 
which has been grown and carefully bred in southern Georgia for 
nearly fifty years, is reported b}' Mr. F. J. Tyler as more popular in 
its home district than any other. ]Mr. Tyler considers this variety 
the best in the district, especially for poor lands, and states that it is 
fast replacing all other varieties. But when the same variety Avas 
tested (under the name " Hart's Imj^roved ") at the Georgia station, 
only 100 miles away, it stood at the bottom of the list. So great a 
contrast would not be likely to aj^pear if tests were made between 
locally adjusted stocks. 

159 



METHODS OF INTRODUCIjSTG jSTEW VARIETIES. 43 

Local adjustment may be looked upon as a plan for the estab- 
lishment of many local strains of each of the more desirable varieties 
of cotton, but these strains are to be kept as much alike as possible 
in their commercial characters instead of each locality carrying on 
an independent selection based on an independent standard of its 
own. 

Instead of taking it for gi'anted that each locality must grow a 
different type of cotton, we ought to begin with the opposite idea 
of extending a few of the most desirable types as widely as possible 
through the cotton belt. Keal limitations will doubtless be found 
after the varieties have been studied from the standpoint of local 
adjustment, but we should not assume that the limits have been 
reached until they are really encountered and we can learn what 
they are. Many experimenters with varieties of cotton and other 
crops have been content with the simple idea that the varieties are 
different, and have not felt any further obligation to ascertain the 
nature of the differences. Nevertheless, the need of more adequate 
knowledge in this field has also been clearly appreciated by some 
of our students of agricultural science. Ji. very definite statement 
of this kind was made over twenty years ago by the late Dr. E. L. 
Sturtevant : 

Tlie true study of a variety, to be of value, must embrace the properties of 
tbe plant, whereby certain adaptations are attained which render the variety 
Iietter fitted for certain conditions of culture. Thus we would know of grain 
whether stiffness of straw or wealaiess of straw, whether ability to endure 
high cultivation or thin seeding or hardiness, etc.. are an inherent propex'ty of 
the variety. We would liuow whether some varieties are more resistant to 
drought than others or can withstand wetness. We would know the relations 
of the plant toward conditions apt to occur in cultivation, and the better we 
know these, the more relial)]e become the conclusions which are derived and 
disseminated as an aid to the cultivator. * * * For us to say at the 
present stage of agricultural study that one variety is best, and infereutially 
that such a varietj^ should be adopted by all, would savor of quackery. The 
best reports we can offer are the results of trial under conditions as noted 
and memoranda of variety peculiarities or such of them that we are able to 
definitely record.'^ 

In this experimental study of cotton varieties from the standpoint 
of this distinction between local adjustment and adaptation to special 
conditions, so as to determine the true values of the different varieties 
in different parts of the cotton belt, the farmer is in particular need 
of the assistance of the Department of Agriculture and the State 
experiment stations. It is not to be expected that the efforts of in- 
dividual farmers will be able to make adequate tests of this kind, for 
the number of varieties is too great and too much time and labor are 
required. 

^ Sturtevant, E. L. New York Agricultural Experiment Station, Fifth An- 
nual Report for 1886, p. 71. 

159 



44 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

RELATION OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT TO OTHER VARIATIONS. 

ENVIRONMENTAL CHARACTERS ALSO HEREDITARY. 

It is usual to think of the characteristics of plants and animals as 
contributed by two general factors, heredit}'" and environment, some 
characteristics being assigned to one factor and some to the other. 
Much effort has even been spent in attempting to determine whether 
characters supposed to come from the environment could become 
hereditary. Some writers have considered that the environment was 
l^nrtly or wholly responsible for the evolutionary development of 
plants and animals, Avhile others have denied even the possibility that 
characters acquired from the environment could become hereditary. 

In the light of our present knowledge the distinction between 
hereditary and environmental characters appears less serious. The 
only difference seems to be that the so-called enA'ironmental charac- 
ters are more readily changed and adjusted to external conditions, 
not that they are less hereditary than other characters. The readi- 
ness with which many characters can be accommodated to changes 
of environment have led many writers on evolution to suppose that 
such characters are not hereditary. It might with equal propriety 
be alleged that they are more truly and effectively hereditary than 
other characters, since their powers of accurate accommodation to a 
particular condition do not appear to be impaired by long periods of 
disuse or hj varied experiences of other kinds which notably disturb 
the adjustments of characters that have less direct relations to the 
environment. 

It is not necessary to suppose that any of the characters of plants 
or animals are directly due to the environment, or that any characters 
are entirely independent of environment. Changes of characters 
following changes of environment can be thought of as representing 
responses or accommodations to external conditions, or influences 
of the conditions upon the processes of heredity. These relations are 
sensitive in many different degrees with different organisms and with 
different characters. Some characters are greatly affected by changes 
of external conditions and others very little. 

Changes of acconnnodation, like the round leaves which give place 
to narrow-lobed leaves when amphibious buttercups are grown in 
water or the changes from fruiting branches to vegetative branches 
in cotton, can be considered as regular reactions or responses to 
changes of external conditions. To recognize a change of characters 
as a response is not the same, however, as to suppose that the charac- 
ter itself is in the nature of a response to a condition. The narrow 
leaves are not thought of as being caused by additional water in the 
plant, but as being put forth by the i^lant as a consequence of the 

150 



RELATION OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT TO OTHER VARIATIONS. 45 

change of conditions. The internal machinery of the phmt that 
enables it to put forth the two kinds of leaves is something quite dif- 
ferent from the air or the water in which the leaves may grow. The 
change of expression of the characters is an internal process, of which 
we know nothing except the visible result, that the plant takes on a 
different method of growth. AVhile we do not understand the inter- 
nal mechanisms that enable one environmental character to be sub- 
stituted for another, there is no reason to consider this fact any more 
mysterious or any more significant from the standpoint of heredity 
than the further fact that characters may also change and alternate 
in expression without unj regularh^ corresponding changes in the 
environment. In some kinds of plants, such as the juniper and the 
eucalyptus, the same individual may bear at the same time two very 
different kinds of leaves, showing that such differences lie, first of 
all, in the plants themselves, rather than in their environments. 

CORRELATION OF CHARACTERS AND NEW-PLACE EFFECTS. 

The phenomenon of correlation ma}' also assist us in understand- 
ing the fact that new conditions call forth diversity. Correlation it- 
self is onl}^ inadequately understood, but man}" examples have been 
collected by students of heredity. By correlation we mean that two 
or more characters tend to be brought into expression together. Cor- 
relation is said to be complete if one of the characters never appears 
without the other. Or there may be lesser degrees of correlation 
where the characters are more often found together than apart. As 
an example of a kind of correlation that is very general in cotton 
there may be mentioned the tendency of longer lint to accompany" a 
narrower, sharp-pointed boll. This correlation not only applies to 
different species and varieties of cotton, but appears to hold even be- 
tween individuals of the same variety. It is always to be expected 
that a plant with more pointed bolls than its neighbor will have longer 
lint. There is no obvious reason why this should be true, for the lint 
does not lie extended in the bolls, but is packed around the individual 
seeds. There is no apparent reason why a rounded boll should not 
contain long-linted seed as well as a pointed boll. 

Xew-place effects observed in imported types of cotton appear to 
be regularly accompanied by correlated characters. Thus if the 
plants grow abnormally large and rdbust, the fertility is not only 
greatly reduced, Ijut the number of locks in the bolls may be dis- 
tinctly lessened as well as the amount, length, and quality of the lint. 
Such facts show that the changes called forth by the new conditions 
are not confined to characters that are usually supposed to be directly 
related to the environment. When great individual diversity ap- 
pears, however, we are carried beyond the idea of correlation as 

159 



46 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VAEIETIEiS. 

usually understood, and have to fall back upon the idea already sug- 
gested that the changing of the accommodation characters may carry 
with it a disturbance of the internal relations which control the 
expression of the other characters. 

The i^henomena of correlation are worthy of careful consideration 
in our attempts to understand the workings of the internal machinery 
of heredity. The general correlation or tendency for smaller and 
more rounded bolls to produce short lint may render the lint liable 
to deterioration through any external agency that affects the shape of 
the bolls. At Yuma, Ariz., in 1908, a considerable series of Upland 
types of cotton included in our experimental plantings showed a very 
general tendency to small rounded bolls, and there was an equally 
general shortening of the lint. 

It also apjDears to be a rule with the Upland cotton that luxuriant 
growth tends not onl}^ to reduce fertilitj^ and make the crop late, but 
also to render the lint inferior. Thus at Del Rio, Tex., in 1908, sev- 
eral selections of the Parker and other types of Upland cotton, which 
grew more luxuriantly than in 1907, showed distinctly inferior lint. 
In some cases the progeny of plants that yielded notably good lint in 
1907 gave not a single j^lant with good lint. The advantage which 
appeared to have been gained in the year before from local adjust- 
ment was much less apparent in 1908, as far as the lint was concerned. 
It was noticed in several cases that the plants with the best lint were 
at the ends of the rows where there was more exposure to light and 
less competition of roots. Thus it appears that luxuriant growth 
does not necessarily conflict with the production of good lint, but that 
overgrowth, along with overcrowding and overshading, is regularly 
accompanied by deterioration of the staple. That unfavorable condi- 
tions might reduce the number of bolls on the plant would not be 
surj)rising, but there is no obvious external reason why the lint inside 
the bolls should be so definitely affected by the external conditions, 
unless it be through correlation with the form of growth adopted by 
the plants. If we can determine the extent to which the lint of dif- 
fei-ent bolls of the same plant ma}^ be affected directly by differences 
of temi^erature and sunlight a better idea of the importance of this 
correlation may be gained. 

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES ACCOMPANIED BY INCREASED DIVERSITY. 

"V^Hien we study with greater care the changes that occur under the 
new conditions, we find that they are not confined to characters that 
are directly connected with the external conditions, those that are 
shared by all the plants in the new environment. We find that these 
more general changes of accommodation to external conditions are 

159 



EELATIOX OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT TO OTHEE VARIATIONS. 47 

often accompanied by even more definite clianges in tlie individual 
plants that greatly increase the amount of differences among them. 
To transfer a variety from a moist to a dry region may result in 
the 2^1ants being more hairy, but it is also likely to result in some 
]3lants becoming more varied in other characters of their leaves than 
they were in the previous locality. The increase of diversity is just 
as concrete a fact as the change of accommodation, and often more 
im])ortant for agriculture, since it is this diversity that lessens the 
crop rather than the general change of characters in the direction 
of accommodation to the new conditions. 

The undesirable increase of diversity may be considered as an in- 
direct result of the change of conditions incidental to the more regular 
acconunodative changes of characters Avhich changes of environment 
call forth. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the making 
of one readjustment among the characters should disturb another 
adjustment in mechanisms as delicate and highly complex as organ- 
isms. But whatever the explanation, the facts remain that diver- 
sity is increased b}" new conditions and that this diversity causes 
deterioration and decrease of the crop, and that these injuries can be 
avoided in later years by renewed selection to establish and maintain 
the local adjustment of the variety. 

Changes of accommodation that are shared by all the individuals 
can be related to different factors of the environment, heat, light, 
moisture, or substances in the soil. To investigate these relations is 
more the object of the science of ecology. The diversity shown b}^ 
the different individuals constitutes another group of phenomena, less 
directly related to ecology than to the science of heredity itself. The 
same internal instability is likely to be aroused by a very different 
external change. It has been observed that the mutations that arise 
in one place are no more alike among themselves than those that 
arise in a ver}^ different place. In seeking to understand such diver- 
sities we stud}' first the behavior of the plants themselves, rather than 
their environmental relations. We no longer hope to explain the 
origin of particular characters by particular conditions, but accept 
the organisms and their varied characters as already existing. We 
must seek to know the facts of behavior before attempting to change 
them. 

^ EFFECT OF SEASONS AND TIMES OF PLANTING. 

An unfavorable season may have the same effects upon variation 
as a transfer into a new region, as already noted. The seasonal 
differences in the same place may even exceed those of different places 
quite widely separated. An excellent example of this has been noted 
by Mr. F. L. Lewton. A white-seeded Mexican cotton grown at 
Victoria, Tex., in 1906, and at Falfurrias, Tex., in 1907, retained the 

150 



48 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

white-seeded character without variation, .but in the season of 1908 
the same stock pLanted again at Falfiirrias showed a considerable 
number of distinctly greenish seeds, and still larger numbers of seeds 
slightly tinged with green or brown, and only a small proportion of 
seeds of the original white color. This change occurred not only in 
plants grown from seed raised at Falfurrias in 1907, but also in those 
raised from some of the seed of 1906, the same stock of seed that had 
produced only white-seeded plants in 1907. Thus there seems to be 
no room for doubt that the conditions at Falfurrias in 1908 were able 
to effect a change which had not been called forth by transfer from 
the Mexican State of Durango to Texas.** 

A similarly general change in the habits of branching of the 
Parker variety of Upland cotton occurred at Del Rio, Tex., in 1907. 
No less than six plantings of different stocks of seed of this variety 
showed a distinct tendency to depart from the normal long-branched 
habit of this variety and go over to the semicluster habit, as a result 
of a shortening of the joints of the fruiting branches, as already 
described in a previous report.^ 

Though there could be no doubt that the conditions were responsi- 
ble for strengthening this tendency to shorter branches there is also 
no reason to suppose that the shorter joints represent a character that 
came in from the environment. It is a matter of observation that the 
tendency to vary in the direction of shorter joints is very general, not 

« Two cases of differeuces in the seed eliaracters of the same individual plants 
in different parts of the season have been noted by yii\ Lewtou. In a picking 
of a selected plant of :Mexicau cotton at Del Rio, Tex., October .3, 1907, all the 
seeds were coated with olive-green fuzz. Another picking made October 22 
showed abont half of the seeds nearly smooth. In the bolls picked from a 
selected plant of the Pachon cotton from western Guatemala at Yuma, Ariz., 
November 11, 1907, there were 42 per cent of smooth seeds, while in an earlier 
picking from the same plant (September 9) almost all of the seeds were fuzzy, 
though in neither case were the seeds as heavily coated with fuzz as is usual 
Vi'ith the Pachon cottons. 

That changes in the color of the fuzz are likely to occur as a result of transfer 
from Guatemala to Texas was also shown by a plant of Kekchi cotton at Kerr- 
ville, Tex., which produced 42 per cent of grayish green seed. This plant was 
from a stock of seed specially selected by Mr. Lewton in Guatemala, where the 
Kekchi cotton has the seeds densely covered with white- fuzz with great regu- 
larity. Large amounts of seed from numerous localities in the Cahabon district 
of eastern Guatemala have been examined by ^Mr. Lewton without finding any 
smooth seeds or colored fuzz. Many examples of colored fuzz have occurred in 
the second generation of the Kekchi cotton in the United States, but the possi- 
bility of hybridization was not excluded. Hybrids usually have green fuzz. 
See Reappearance of a Primitive Character in Cotton Hybrids, Circular IS, 
Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 

^ Cook, O, F. Suppressed and Intensified Characters in Cotton Hybrids. Bul- 
letin 147, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 1909. 
150 



RELATION OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT TO OTHER VARIATIONS. 49 

only among varieties of cotton but in many other plants. The ten- 
dency is more frequently manifested as a definite change or mutation 
of an individual i^lant growing, it may be, with hundreds or thou- 
sands of others that do not change. The behavior of the Parker 
cotton at Del Rio is of interest as showing that external conditions 
may at times interfere to accelerate or intensify a tendency to change 
that under other conditions would remain entirely latent. 

Even the time of planting may have a definite etl'ect upon the 
habits of growth and fertility of the plantSj as can be easily seeu 
when the same kind of cotton is planted m adjoining rows at diifer- 
ent dates. Very early plantings, if they are not actually killed by 
frost, may be seriously injured by cold weather so that the plants 
make very slow growth. Many individuals may remaiu permanently 
Stunted, or if they finally grow to full stature may do so only late 
in the season and produce no early bolls. 

Plantings made somewhat later, that begin their growth while the 
W'Cather is still cool, but without being stunted, have a distinct tend- 
ency to produce fruiting branches low down on the stalk, and are 
thus able to set an early crop of l)olls. Late jilantings, that begin 
their growth in warm weather, become too luxuriant at first and 
jn'oduce sterile vegetative branches at the base of the plant, instead 
of fruiting branches. The result is that the cotton that is planted 
too late in the season may require a longer time to set the same 
number of bolls than an earlier planting of the same cotton in the 
same jilace. 

These facts explain the failure of experiments that have been made 
with very late plantings, in June, in order to " starve out " the boll 
weevils in the spring months. Even if no boll weevils were present 
these very late plantings could not be expected to yield as well as the 
earlier plantings. In the presence of boll weevils there may be a 
total failure of the crop. 

The facts also explain why in southern Texas plantings made in 
April and May often yield larger crops than plantings made in 
March. Conspicuous examples of this were observed at Del Rio, Tex., 
in 1907, where fields planted in April and May were distinctly better 
than March-planted fields, in spite of the fact that weevils w^ere pres- 
ent in abundance early in the spring in cotton that had survived the 
winter. In an experimental field planted May 22 the crop was 
uninjured even as late as October 2. Most of the plants remained 
entirely untouched by the weevils, showing no punctures on squares 
or bolls. 

The ability of later cotton to overtake and ontyield earlier plant- 
ings, even in the presence of the boll weevil, was definitely shown 
in a succession of plantings of Triumph cotton at San Antonio, Tex., 

150 



50 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

in 1907. A planting made on March 8 was not only outyielded by 
adjacent plantings of March 23 and April 7, but the later plantings 
actually ripened larger proportions of their crop before the 1st of 
September. The yields for the three dates of planting stood in the 
proportion of 1,109 pounds per acre, 1,220 pounds, and 1,190 pounds, 
whereas the corresponding percentages of cotton ripened before 
September 1 were 05, ()9, and 7G. The more rapid development of the 
April and Ma}^ plantings produced buds and bolls faster than the 
weevils were able to destroy them. The growth of March plantings 
may be so seriously retarded by the effects of cold weather that the 
production of weevils overtakes the cotton, especially if one or more 
of the early crops of buds are blasted and " shed," as often happens 
when the plants are checked by unfavorable weather.'* 

AGGREGATE AND PROMISCUOUS MUTATIONS. 

The behavior of the Parker cotton at Del Hio shows that it is 
sometimes joossible for external conditions to induce a change in the 
expression of a character that can also change without any apparent 
relation to external conditions, as when a single individual mutation 
occurs among many hundreds or thousands of plants that remain 
without change. The simultaneous mutation of all the individuals 
of a planting shows that the conditions of that planting have favored 
mutation. Though they do not prove that sporadic individual mu- 
tations that occur in other places are caused by external conditions, 
they do show^ that the two kinds of changes are not so essentially 
distinct as often supposed. Clocks that are able to strike by their 
own mechanism may also be induced to strike by external interference 
with the mechanism, though the striking itself may be the same in 
both cases. It is not necessary to suppose that there is any funda- 
mental difference between mutations that take place spontaneously 
as the result of changes in the organic mechanism itself and those that 
appear to have more direct relations to external conditions. Whether 
many mutations occur, or a few, or a single one, the nature of the 
mutations may be much the same. Nor need we think that tlie re- 
lation^ to the external conditions are fundamentally different in cases 
where many plants mutate in the same direction from cases where 
they mutate in different directions. 

Both aggregate and promiscuous mutations have been described 
in the same species, the garden tomato, the former by Dr. C. A. 

"Anotlipr f'xperinioiit n( (lie San Antonio Experiment Farm in IDOS uave 
similar results. Plantings of March 14, March 27, and April 20 yielded at the 
rate of 1,040, 1,099, and 1,142 pounds per acre, respectively. See Headley, F. P>., 
and Hastinijs, S. H., The Work of the San Antonio Experiment Farm in 1908, 
Circular ,34, Bureau of Plant Industry, p. IG. 
159 



, EELATION OF LOCAL ADJUSTMEKT TO OTHER VARIATIONS. 51 

A\1iite," of Washington, I). C, the hitter by Prof. E. P. Sandsten, 
of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station. In Doctor 
White's experiments whole plantings changed in the same direction, 
as in the case of our Parker cotton at Del Rio. In the Wisconsin 
experiments great individual diversity appeared, as in newly im- 
ported Central American cottons: 

The results of this excessive application of fertilizers soon became apparent. 
Hardly two plants in the bed of ninety-six were alike in all particulars. The 
stems in many plants were more or less decumbent, in others the internodes 
were elongated. A few plants were more or less dwarfed. The leaves showed 
marked variation in size, shape, and subdivisions; the whole bed giving an 
appearance of a variety test. The variation became more marked at the time 
of flowering. In many instances the blossoms were abnormal, both as to size 
and form. The stamens were greatly modified in several of the plants, and 
in one instance to such an extent as to l)ec<»nu> almost aborted. On the other 
hand, the pistils were greatly thickened and overgrown. One plant in particu- 
lar, which showed marked modifications in the floral parts, was labeled and 
carefully watched. As the fruit grew it was noticed that the pistil and fleshy 
part of the ovary devel()])ed abnormally and there ajipeared to be no evidence 
of seed formal ion. During the process of growth and ripening of the fruit 
this fact was further emphasized, and when the first fruit was cut it was 
found to be seedless. The growth hal)it of the plant, while not excessive, showed 
a marked deviation from the ordinary type. The leaves were more divided 
and somewhat curly ; they were also much smaller, and the general habit of 
the stem and branches was more or less decumbent.'' 

An aggregate mutation of many plants in one direction has greater 
resemblance to a change of adjustment or accommodation than ]ias a 
promiscuous mutation, where each j^lant appears to change in a dif- 
ferent direction, but the promiscuous mutation appears rather less 
remarkable than the aggregate if we consider that the external con- 
ditions have only disturbed the previous adjustments of the char- 
acters, without inclining them toward any particular new adjustment. 
As a matter of fact, the two forms of mutation are often closely asso- 
ciated in the phenomena of acclimatization. An aggregate mutation 
of all the plants to a different habit of growth is usually accom- 
panied and followed l)y many and very promiscuous changes in 
other characters. A seKous change in a character that is affected 
by the external conditions may be followed by changes in many otlier 
characters that have no apparent connection with external conditions. 

The facts of mutation forbid any reliance in practical agriculture 
upon the idea that a stock which has been rendered uniform by 
selection will remain miiform if selection is relaxed. This idea cer- 
tainly does not rest upon the observation of varieties as they are, but 

''The JMutations of Lycopersicum. Popular Science ^Monthly, vol. HT. ]). 151. 

* Sandsten, E. P. Excessive Feeding as a Factor in I*roducing ^'ariations in 
Tomatoes. Twenty-second Annual Report of the liniversity of Wisconsin 
Agricultural Experiment Station, pp. 301-304. 1905. 
159 



52 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

is an inference from the theory that evohition takes place by sudden 
changes of characters, like those that distinguish a mutation from the 
parent variety or from another mutation. An open-fertilized plant 
like cotton is more readily variable and hence more susceptible to 
new-place effects than a strictly self-fertilized plant like wheat or 
barley. Nevertheless, it appears that self-fertilized plants are far 
from being immune to variation. Even in vegetative varieties the 
different stocks derived from the same original individual may become 
very diverse as a result of bud variation, or may show different 
degrees of vigor and fertility. 

Acclimatization appears to be especially difficult with carefully 
selected, line-bred, self-fertilized varieties, such as those of wheat and 
barley. Specialists in these crops consider that the carefully selected 
stocks are much less likely to become acclimatized or adjusted to a 
new place than the types that have not been so carefully selected. A 
whole planting may show the same variation at the same time, an 
aggregate mutation instead of a promiscuous mutation, giving only 
one chance of adjustment to the new conditions instead of the vast 
immber of chances afforded by promiscuous mutation. It is possible 
that something might be gained in such cases by making the experi- 
ment of acclimatization or local adjustment with cross-fertilized seed 
as affording a better opjoortunity for the display of a useful diversity. 

RELATION or SELECTION TO LOCAL ADJUSTMENT. 

One of the reasons why the phenomena of local adjustment and 
acclimatization have been so largely overlooked and left out of 
account as factors of practical importance in agriculture is to be 
found in the general popularity of the idea that selection brings 
about the progressive improvement of plants and animals, as held 
by many writers on evolution. But for general scientific purposes 
as well as for practical reasons it is important to understand how 
the beneficial effects of selection are exerted. Ever since Darwin's 
first writings on the subject of natural selection were published the 
chief objection to his doctrines has been thnt they did not explain 
how selection could bring into existence the new or improved charac- 
ters shown in the evolutionary progress of species. It has to be 
admitted that selection, whether natural or artificial, must deal with 
variations as accomplished facts. Selection gives one variation or 
characteristic a great advantage over other alternative character- 
istics, and thus allows it to become more quickly the character of a 
whole variety or species. Thus, natural selection might assist in 
diversifying two parts of a sj)ecies that were living under different 
conditions, just as artificial selection may develop two or more differ- 
ent strains from one variety by saving in some groups the variations 

159 



EELATION OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT TO OTHER VARIATIONS. 53 

that are rejected in the others. But in all such cases selection still 
deals Avith differences as they appear, and does not help us to under- 
stand the nature of the differences themselves, or the factors that are • 
responsible for their appearance. 

Selection for local adjustment deals, like natural selection, with 
forms and characters that already exist in the plants; the question 
of improvement by further changes is not involved. The benefit that 
is secured when local adjustment is accomplished through selection 
is simply that of bringing the variety back to its previous standard 
of uniformity. Instead, therefore, of saying that local adjustment 
and acclimatization are to be explained by reference to selection, we 
ought rather to recognize that the facts of local adjustment and 
acclimatization throw- light on the workings of selection. We must 
recognize the influence of external conditions to call forth diversit}^ 
before we can understand the effect of selection to improve the vari- 
ety again by restoring it to uniformity of expression. The Triumph 
cotton had already had the advantage of persistent selection, and 
shows the result in great uniformity. But when new or unfavorable 
conditions disturb this uniformity, a new " improvement " becomes 
possible through selection for a new adjustment to uniformity of 
expression of characters. It is this secondary selection that becomes 
l^articularly necessary to restore the uniformity of varieties in new 
places that we call local adjustment. The name, of course, is quite 
incidentjil to the recognition of the fact that changes of such great 
practical importance occur in our varieties and that they may be so 
easily corrected. 

The fact that the selective improvement of domesticated varieties is 
a i^rocess of reducing or eliminating the individual diversity found 
among the members of wild species agrees completely with facts 
revealed in other lines of study. The individual diversity among the 
members of a wild species is generally very inuch greater than among 
the members of a domesticated variety. A progressive approxima- 
tion to uniformity is attained through selection. The indication that 
the diversity is never entirely eliminated by selection, but is merely 
suppressed and is able to reassert itself after many generations, is 
also in full agreement with all the numerous facts of atavism and 
reversion. It is possible to understand that most of the change^ 
which we ascribe to selection represent changes in the expression of 
characters already existing in the plants, and do not require the 
origination of any new characters not already developed in the more 
diverse ancestral groups from which our domesticated stocks have 
been derived. 

It is sometimes supposed that uniformity represents the natural 
condition of reproduction and that all deviations must be due to 

159 



54 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES, 

hybridization. Nevertheless, the scientific world noAv generally recog- 
nizes the fact that sports or mutations do occur, that is, definite 
changes in the expression of character in members of otherwise uni- 
form groups, without any admixture of blood. What has not been 
recognized hitherto is the fact that such changes are not necessarily 
confined to rare individual variations, but may take place simul- 
taneously in large numbers, following changes of external conditions. 

LIMITATIONS OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT. 

The process of local adjustment may be said to have been completed 
when a variety has become as uniform in a new locality as it was in 
the district where it originated or improved by selective breeding. It 
is not to be expected, however, that diversity will cease entirely. It 
does not appear that any amount of selection can prevent the trans- 
mission of the ancestral diversities or prevent the return of some of 
them to expression in occasional individuals. The most careful and 
persistent breeders have never succeeded in putting an end to the 
appearance of mutative variations. And even if we consider that 
the characters of the plants should remain uniform as long as the 
conditions remained the same, there would still be the difRcvdty that 
conditions are always differing, even when we tiy to make them as 
nearly alike as possible. 

The effects of an unfavorable season may greatly overbalance the 
advantage that can be gained through selection for local adjustment 
in a favorable season, and may. even increase the amount of diversity 
beyond that of the first year. It is accordingly to be expected that 
the second year of a new variety will sometimes be found inferior to 
the first year, in spite of an attempt at local adjustment. 

Change of the crop from one soil to another may have its effect 
upon local adjustment, even in a favorable season, or may intensify 
the effects of an unfavorable season. The advantage that could be 
ascribed to local adjustment in our experiment at Del Rio, Tex., in 
1907, was very slight in comparison with that shown at Kerrville, 
Tex., in the same season. In some of the varieties no advantage at all 
could be detected. Some of the selections brought from San Antonio 
or Victoria were better than those made at Del Rio in the preceding 
year. A change of the location of our Del Rio experiment from a 
gravelly slope, recently leveled for irrigation, to the deep silty soil of 
the river bottom gave a reasonable explanation of the discrepancy of 
results with respect to local adjustment. The Del Rio crop of 1907 
Avas very much better than that of 1906, but the Del Rio selections 
from the crop of 1906 showed little or no superiority in 1907 to those 
brought from other places. 

The conditions of the experiments of the two years at Del Rio were 
as essentially different as though they had been in distant localities. 

159 



LiailTATIOJSrS OF LOCAL ADJUSTMENT. 55 

The failure of the local adjustment effects to appear should be consid- 
ered as confirming the reality of the phenomenon. On the other 
hand, it ought not to be thought that the excellent behavior of some 
of the Victoria and San Antonio selections under the very favorable 
conditions at Del Kio in 1907 would have been shown if they had 
been grown under the Del Rio conditions of 1906. 

A bad season or an unfavorable location should not lead the farmer 
to suppose that his efforts for local adjustment must necessarily fail. 
Even though none of the plants in the field attain the full stature 
and fertility of the variety, the opportunity of selection is not nec- 
essarily destroyed. Plants that excel their neighbors under unfa- 
vorable conditions are likely to yield progen}^ that will show a 
corresponding excellence under better conditions. 

Professional seed growers appreciate the fact that somewhat un- 
favorable conditions may render the work of selection more efficient 
than conditions that are ideal from the standpoint of crop j)roduc- 
tion. Unfavorable conditions invite the appearance of unfavorable 
tendencies and thus facilitate the removal of the lines of descent in 
which these tendencies are strongest. 

Very unfavorable conditions during the jxu'iod of seed production 
may also prove to have an influence in local adjustment, since the 
adverse effect:, might not appear till the next generation. It is easy 
to understand that plants may develop normally while conditions are 
favorable, and yet fail to set equally normal seeds if the conditions 
became unfavorable. Many crop plants will complete their develop- 
ment in an apparently normal manner under conditions where they 
produce only inferior seed. The fact that tlie period of seed produc- 
tion is very long in cotton enables this plant to furnish even more 
definite evidence of the influences of external conditions, for the seeds 
and lint are often found to differ notably on the same plant." 

Instances may also be found where efforts at local adjustment will 
fail to bring a variety to a satisfactor}^ degree of uniformity. It 
is not j:o be expected that a variety that fails to respond to local 
adjustment and return to a uniform behavior will equal a well- 
adjusted variety. If a variety fails to respond to local adjustment 
after a fair opportunity, it will be reasonable to consider the condi- 
tions are really not favorable: that the stock has been hybridized, or 
that it has never been brought to a condition of uniformity. 

In view of the wide differences of soils and seasons that may be 
encountered on the same farm, abilit}^ to withstand changes of condi- 
tions without being injuriously affected is a factor of great importance 
in a field crop like cotton. There is no reason to suppose that the 

«A study of Diversity in Egyptian Cotton. Bulletin 150, Bureau of Plant 
Industry, V. S. Department of xVgriculture. 1909. 
15'J 



56 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

injurious changes of characters are entirely confined to strains of 
cotton that have been carried recently to new places. An unusual 
season may render conditions quite as exceptional as a new place and 
may have the same effect of arousing diversity. 

In considering the use of local adjustment as a means of removing 
or reducing these undesirable diversities there is no need to lose sight 
of the fact that varieties of cotton and other plants undoubtedly ditfer 
greatly in their relation to the local adjustment factor. Varieties 
that can not have their conditions changed without becoming injuri- 
ously diverse must be reckoned in the same general class as those that 
are narrowly adapted in other respects and refuse to thrive or to bear 
fruit outside of some particular district. Other things being equal, 
varieties less subject to disturbances of expression relations are always 
to be preferred. AVitli cotton it would be very desirable if only one 
variety of cotton were grown over a large district, since the uniformit}^ 
of the product is a factor of commercial importance. 

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOCAL ADJUSTMENT AND BREEDING. 

Though the work of local adjustment may l)e considered as a part 
oi the art of breeding, in the largest sense of the word, the process of 
local adjustment is quite distinct and in some respects is even opposed 
to the processes that are usually given prominence in the improvement 
of varieties by breeding. The breeder seeks for new characters or 
new combinations, or to obtain still higher degrees of ex^^ression of 
desirable features, for something exceptional and different from the 
recognized varieties. By local adjustment, on the other hand, we do 
not seek to change the variety, but to prevent change by rejecting all 
the lines of descent in which changes appear. 

When the commercial seed grower pulls out the " rogues " or " off " 
plants that do not " come true '^ to the characters of the variety he 
is not usually thought of as engaged in breeding, but only as pre- 
serving his stock from deterioration. The work of local adjustment 
is exactly analogous to the " roguing " of a variety. We are simply 
recognizing the fact that the transfer of seed to new conditions is 
likely to produce such large numbers of rogues that it is necessary 
to extend the roguing process from the hands of the seedsman to 
those of the farmer. The seedsman who does not practice roguing is 
reckoned as dishonest, because he does not sell '" pure " seed, but 
allows seeds of rogue plants to be mixed in Avith the variety that he 
offers for sale. The farmer who neglects local adjustment need not 
be considered dishonest because lie may not injure anybody but him- 
self, but lie is at least depriving himself of the advantage that he 
expects to secure from the seedsman. 



DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOCAL ADJUSTMENT AND BREEDING. 57 

Seedsmen not only pull out rogue j^lants that show definite dif- 
ferences in the characteristics of the leaves, flowers, or fruits, but 
they also take into account differences of behavior of the plants with 
respect to such qualities as vigor, fertility, and earliness. They 
know that the extent to which a variety may adhere to these desir- 
able qualities depends largely upon the conditions under which it is 
grown. They recognize that even a slight departure from the nor- 
mal qualities of the variety is likely to arouse more persistent dif- 
ferences in later generations, especially if the influence is repeated. 
A careful study of the behavior of varieties of garden peas with re- 
spect to the quality of earliness has been made by Mr. W. W. Tracy, 
sr., who states the following conclusions: 

Seedsmen commonly believe that, in the case of peas the character of the 
soil has a marked influence over the character of the plant, and that this in- 
fluence extends to and is carried by the seed, but that such soil influence is 
decidedly cumulative in its effects, so that in practice they attach little im- 
portance to it for one season, but carefully avoid the use of stock seed which 
has been submitted to such influence for consecutive years.*^ 

It is sometimes said that farmers ought to be as much interested in 
the breeding of their domestic plants as in the breeding of their do- 
mestic animals, because the practical importance is as great in the 
one case as in the other. This is undoubtedly true of the work of 
breeding as a whole. Local adjustment, however, is a subject which 
appears to have much more importance with plants than with ani- 
mals, for plants are more susceptible than animals to changes of ex- 
ternal conditions. Temperature is undoubtedly one of the chief 
factors that induce changes of characters in plants, whereas all of 
the higher animals and birds maintain their own temperatures with 
great constancy and have thus eliminated one of the chief agencies 
that disturb the hereditary processes of plants. Plants have to ad- 
just themselves to wide extremes of external conditions of climate 
ajid soil, while many animals have large liberty of choice of en- 
vironment. 

The possibility of obtaining desirable variations by placing plants 
under conditions that call forth a wide range of diversity is worthy 
of careful consideration from the standpoint of the breeder, as an 
alternative of hybridization. The fact that a great majority of the 
variations are undesirable does not preclude the possibility that indi- 
viduals of special excellence may sometimes be fomid, from which 
superior new varieties may be obtained, as from other mutations. The 
Triumph cotton itself is said by Mr. Mebane to have originated from 
a single peculiar plant of the Texas Stormproof variety, a plant that 

'^ Tracy, W. W., sr. The Influence of Climate and Soil on the Transmitting 
Power of Seeds. Science, n. s., vol. 19, p. 739. 1904. 
159 



58 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

luid all the present characteristics of the Triumph definitely devel- 
oped. While there is nothing to show that the subsequent selection 
has changed or " improved " the variety, it has served the important 
purpose of maintaining its uniformity and productiveness. 

Diversities that can be secured without hybridization may be found 
more valuable than the others, especially in seed-propagated plants, 
where the persistent diversities of hybrids seriously interfere with 
their utilization. This difficulty of " fixing the characters " is avoided 
in the case of the mutations, which are often constant from the first. 

In local adjustment we have no interest in these possibilities of 
obtaining new varieties. Divergent plants, even though they may be 
as good or better than the regular stock of the variety, should not be 
retained unless they are to be separated for breeding purposes. To 
keep them in the field and allow their progeny to become crossed 
with each other and with the parental type is only to lose the new 
strains without making the old one any better. The same result is 
to be expected as when distinct varieties are crossed. The first gene- 
ration may not be inferior, but later generations are likely to call 
forth a degenerative diversity similar to that which we seek to avoid 
by local adjustment. 

In acclimatizing imported varieties it has appeared that the selec- 
tion of types that depart from the usual form of the stock in its 
previous habitat is likely to delay acclimatization, for these are not 
as likely to " breed true " as plants that return more nearly to the 
accustomed form of the variety. There may prove to be a relation 
between the stability of new variations and the constancy or uni- 
formity which has been attained in the stock in which variation 
appears. The constancy of the new forms is likely to be greater in 
local adjustment, for they appear to be more closely of the nature of 
mutations. Our experiments have not been carried far enough to 
determine the point, but it has appeared thus far that some of the 
variations that are aroused in new localities are likely to be as con- 
stant as the parent stock, or even more so. 

The failure in the past to distinguish local adjustment from breed- 
ing is undoubtedly responsible for some of the apparently contra- 
dictory facts that have been reported. Local adjustment enables 
us to understand why large increases of yield can be secured at once 
by simple selection in the first year or two, and also why no similar 
rate of " improvement " is obtained in later years, after the variety 
has been brought to a condition of approximate uniformity. 

The methods of breeding which are supposed to bring about true 
improvements of varieties by individual selection usually need to 
be practiced on a larger scale and with greater precautions against 
accidental errors than most farmers are willing to ajDply. Either the 

159 



DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOCAL ADJUSTMENT AND BREEDING. 59 

work is found too difficult and expensive or the numbers of plants 
that can be tested become so small as to seriously reduce the prospects 
of success. If we narrow our stock to progenies of a few individuals, 
these progenies have to be most carefully tested, for if a wrong 
selection be made permanent damage is done. The best stock may 
be lost by mere accident, and the accident may go unnoticed unless 
elaborate jDrecautions are taken to equalize the conditions of the 
tests. 

The more unstable or degenerate a variety is the more frequently 
will it show a marked response to selection. It is often assumed that 
the true value of a selected stock can be shown by comparing it with 
an unselected stock of the* same variety, but the difference between 
the two ought rather to be looked upon as an index of the extent 
to which the imselected stock has degenerated. The true value of the 
selected stock can only be judged by comparison with equally selected 
and locally adjusted stocks of other varieties, to see which will show 
the best and most regular performance inider the given conditions. 
Other things being equal, a stock ought to be considered better that 
does not " respond " to selection, for this indicates that all the in- 
dividuals are nearly equal in their inherent qualities, whereas a stock 
that regularly shows a marked improvement from selection gives at 
the same time evidence of a more prompt and persistent recurrence 
of diversity, as a more frequent factor of deterioration and loss, 
unless more stable strains can be separated by selection. 

The Avicle differences in yield which breeders have found among 
the jDrogeny of individual members of carefully selected stocks are 
usually cited as proofs of the value of continued selection, but exces- 
sive variability of yield may also indicate that the stock is deficient 
in local adjustment or that it has reached a condition of serious 
degeneration. An interesting example of diversity in yields among 
a series of selections of cotton grown under the same conditions has 
been published by Mr. A. M. Ferguson in the Texas Stockman and 
Farmer for March 31, 1909. Out of 28 selections 12 gave total 
yields at rates of from 1,218 to 1,529 pounds per acre, while 13 
selections fell below 1,000 pounds per acre, 8 below 900, 4 below 800, 
and 1 below TOO, the figure in this case being 67-t pounds. The yields 
from the first of the two pickings were even more unequal than- the 
totals, ranging from 127 pounds per acre to 1,348 pounds. 

If a large proportion of the progeny regularly prove to be defi- 
cient the only remedy may be to secure a better stock, one that is 
more uniformh' fertile. A stock that gives us too small a proj^ortion 
of high-grade plants may be less desirable than one that gives a larger 
proportion of plants of less conspicuous excellence. Many of our 
carefully selected stocks, both of animals and of plants, fail to main- 
tain the standards of fertility that would be expected among normal 

159 



60 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

individuals of an ordinary " mixed population." It is often assumed 
among breeders that strict uniformity in other varietal characteristics 
carries with it an equal uniformity of vigor and fertility, but this 
relation has not been established as a fact outside of varieties that 
are propagated by line breeding, and even these may deteriorate.*' 

Vigor and fertility represent physiological standards of organic 
efficiency. They are not to be looked upon as characters in the same 
sense as the minor details of color, shape, or function, but are rather 
to be considered as cooperative results of the activities of other char- 
acters and functions. It has yet to be shown that greater vigor or 
fertility can be attained in groups that are restricted to the expres- 
sion of a single set of characters than in groups of greater individual 
diversity. 

A further difference between local adjustment and breeding may 
be found in the fact that the diversities which make local adjust- 
ment a necessity are in some important respects different from those 
with which the breeder must deal in establishing an improved strain 
from a stock which has not been previously subjected to careful 
breeding. Though we may think of the diversity that arises in a new 
place as a return toward the diversity that existed before the variety 
had been rendered uniform by selection, the new diversity does not 
appear to be altogether the same as that of a group that has never 
been closely selected. 

In an unselected wild stock the plants are individually different, 
but the differences are harder to detect because of the presence of 
many intermediate gradations: Ordinary " mixed populations " of 
animals or plants obey Galton's law of regression and tend to resemble 
their immediate parents instead of their remote ancestors. In a wild 
type the law of regression would aid natural selection in bringing the 
more favored characters into expression in larger and larger propor- 
tions of the freely interbreeding population. Mutations, on the 
other hand, do not appear to obey the law of regression, but may go 
back definitely to a character of a remote ancestor and show no 
influence from the immediate parents or grandparents. 

In addition to bringing back the normal diversity of the wild type 
into expression mutative variations have two other very important 
elements of diversity. The first element is the diversity of more 
remote ancestors that would not tend to appear or to remain in expres- 
sion under conditions of regression and free interbreeding. The 
second element is the suppression of many normal characteristics and 
coordinations, as in the cluster habit and the bullate leaves or the loss 
of fuzz or of lint. Darwin and many other writers have noted the 

"The Superiority of Liue Breeding over Narrow Breeding. Bulletin 146, 
Bureau of Plant Industry. U. S. Department of Agriculture. 1909. 
159 



DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOCAL ADJUSTMENT AND BREEDING. 61 

general tendency of plants recently introduced into cultivation to 
" break " into diverse varieties.'* 

In strictly self-fertilized varieties like those of wheat and other 
cereals, selection can be said to have only one effect; it makes a stock 
more uniform in proportion as the diversities are rejected. Condi- 
tions of reproduction in the lines that are preserved are in no way 
affected by the taking away of the other lines. In plants that are 
subjected to frequent cross-fertilization, as in cotton, the selective 
restriction of descent to narrow limits or to a single line has an indi- 
rect effect upon the heredity of the plants that remain. It renders 
them much more uniform than before; that is, much more regular or 
" fixed *" in the expression of their characters. While never attaining 
exact likeness, the great majority of them may differ only in the 
extremely slight details, usually termed " fluctuating variations " 
by writers on heredity. Plants that have attained this condition of 
uniformity, so that they show only fluctuating differences and pro- 
duce progeny of equal uniformity, are said to be " pure " or homo- 
zygous, in the technical terminology of Mendelism. They tend more 
regularly to bring into expression only one set of characters instead 
of the indiscriminate diversity of wild species or of " unimproved " 
domesticated stocks. 

Writers on Mendelism look upon self-fertilization as a means of 
separating the lines of descent that are uniform or homozygous from 
those that are diverse or heterozygous, as in the case of Mendelian 

« " While specific stability under constant conditions appears to be the rule in 
nature, it is widely different in cultivation. When a plant is brou^lit under 
cultural conditions it maintains its type for some time unaltered, then gives 
way and becomes practically plastic. From my experience at Kew, where I 
saw the process continually going on, I hazarded the generalization that any 
species, annually reproduced from t-eeiJ, could be broken down in about five 
years. 

"In nature we deal with a host of individuals; in cultivation with a very 
limited number. In my view specific stability is maintained partly by the 
weeding out of unfavorable variations, partly by wide interbreeding. Now, 
it is obvious that under cultivation the latter agency is inoperative, and 
cultural conditions bring other influences to bear, especially as regards nutri- 
tion. 

"The races of (li)nothera which De Vries has raised are nothing more than 
what a horticulturist would expect ; and it may be conceded that if such races 
could hold their own in nature, distinct species might originate in this way. 
Rut there is no evidence that they do ; and the probability of their being able 
to do so is against them. 

" Cultural mutations seem, as a matter of fact, to have little, if any, capacity 
for holding their own in the struggle for existence. I can not call to mind a 
single instance of one which has been successful, and even in cultivation there 
Is some reason to think that they are short lived ; but this is a point on which 
we are in urgent need of carefully ascertained facts." See Thiselton-Dyer, 
W. T., Specific Stability and Mutation, Nature, November 28, 1907, pp. 78 and 79. 
159 



62 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF ouTTON VARIETIES. 

lij'brids. It ought also to be recognized that self-fertilization and 
other forms of restricted descent serve to establish the homozygous 
condition so that uniform progeny are produced instead of diverse 
progeny. The persistent application of a standard of selection tends 
to establish that standard for larger and larger proportions of the 
progeny unless degeneration ensues. Even the variations of homo- 
zygous stocks usually remain homozygous, though the act of variation 
is in itself a violation of the rule of homozygous uniformity. 

A line-bred variety tends to become " pure " or homozygous in 
all its characters, whereas broad-bred, cross-fertilized varieties may 
become homozygous in only a part of their characters, those that 
are specially selected. It appears to be possible to secure a consider- 
able degree of uniformity in a desirable character without establish- 
ing uniformity in all other respects; that is, without placing the 
variety on a basis of complete line-breeding, which is a practical im- 
possibility in open- fertilized plants grown as field crops, like corn and 
cotton. Varieties of corn attain a highly characteristic uniformity of 
ears without enforcing a requirement of uniformit}^ in the plants. 
Egyptian cotton also has a high commercial reputation for uni- 
formity, but has not been made uniform in vegetative characters to 
any such extent as some of our Upland and Sea Island varieties. 

Selection for local adjustment of established varieties is much more 
practicable for the farmer than selection for breeding in unimproved 
strains. It is much easier to detect an aberrant individual in a group 
of plants otherwise closely similar to each other than to appreciate 
individual differences in a group where the diversity is general and 
indiscriminate. Variations that take place in varieties that have been 
bred previously into a uniform or homozygous condition are much 
more definite and hence more easily perceptible than the less definite 
differences found in unimproved varieties. Too much diversit}^ will 
greatly increase the difficulty of selection for local adjustment, unless 
the farmer is thoroughly familiar beforehand with the normal type of 
his variety. Unless we are able to distinguish the type of the variety 
our efforts will only result in the saving of a collection of varieties, 
and the further mixing of these together can only mongrelize the 
stock still more. 

LOCAL ADJUSTMENT AS A FARM OPERATION. 

The facts of local adjustment will have a practical value to the 
farmer in proportion as they are able to convince him of the necessity 
of selecting his own seed. If by the light labor of selecting his seed 
from normal fertile plants he can increase the quantity and quality 
of his product from 10 to 20 per cent, he must recognize the fact that 
such selection is quite as practical a farm operation as planting, culti- 
vating, or harvesting the crop. 



SUPERIORITY OF HOME-GRuvVN SEED. 63 

The labor of such selection is very slight. It is not necessary to 
establish any absolute standards or score cards, and in almost every 
family there are men, women, and children well qualified by natural 
acuteness of observation to recognize the plants that are more fertile 
than their neighbors and to avoid those that deviate from the char- 
acters of the variety or have short, weak, or sparse lint. Normal 
characters and habits of growth, fertility, and good and abundant 
lint are the only features that need to be taken into account in main- 
taining the local adjustment of a variety. Selection for this purpose 
is a matter quite apart from the breeding of new varieties or of 
special strains by careful comparison of single individuals and the 
progeny derived from each. 

Differences in vigor or fertility that can not be distinguished in 
the individual plants themselves will become apparent when the 
progenies of these individuals are compared. Selective breeding by 
means of progeny rows is a further step beyond local adjustment that 
will give the farmer a further improvement of his crop if he will 
take the additional pains that this system requires in raising the 
progenies separately, and keeping the stock pure. It is a mistake, 
however, to suppose that even the progeny row is a full substitute for 
local adjustment as a means of guarding a superior stock against 
deterioration. No matter how excellent a variety may be or how 
skillful the selection of the professional breeder who may have per- 
fected it, the farmer will still need to maintain its efficiency by his 
own selection if he is to get the best possible results of productive 
efficiency. 

SUPERIORITY OF HOME- GROWN SEED. 

In thus urging upon the farmer the necessity of maintaining the 
local adjustment of whatever variety of cotton he may prefer to 
grow there is no intention of pronouncing any general conclusion on 
the much debated question of the superiority of home-grown seed over 
imported seed. One or the other of these alternatives is often argued 
as a general principle or policy of agriculture, whereas the question 
is really very complicated. Different principles have to be considered 
in relation to different crops. The growing of the seed of many 
highly specialized varieties of ornamental plants and garden vegeta- 
bles, such as cauliflower and radishes, is confined to a single locality. 
By very careful treatment on the part of the grower the i^roblem of 
local adjustment can often be avoided. A single crop can be secured 
from the imported seed, even under conditions where no good seed 
can be raised for a second generation, but with a field crop like 
cotton that can not be protected against variations of climate and 
soil the case is very different. 

159 



64 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

And even with cotton itself it is not to be expected that local 
adjustment will give equal advantages in all cases. Some localities 
may profit by the regular importation of seed from other districts. 
Experiments with newly imported cottons have shown in a few cases 
larger crops in the first year than have been obtained in later plant- 
ings of the same stocks. In such cases the transfer to new conditions, 
instead of throwing the plants out of adjustment and producing an 
injurious range of diversity, seems rather to give an unusual stimula- 
tion of growth, without inducing the sterility which usually accom- 
panies such stimulation. Two instances were found at Del Rio., Tex., 
in 1908, where seed brought from Falfurrias, Tex., produced rows of 
plants that were distinctly larger than rows of the same varieties 
(Parker and Cook's Improved) grown from seed raised at Del Rio. 
But in both these instances the greater size was accompanied by a 
decrease of fertility, or at least of earliness. Thus no practical benefit 
was shown for such an exchange of seed. 

With a forage plant or other crop grown for vegetative tissues 
alone a response of the same kind might afford a distinct advantage. 
If it can be found that the bringing of seed from one region to 
another uniformly results in such a desirable stimulation, and espe- 
cially if it is accompanied by increased yields, such transfers of seeds 
between particular regions will need to be recognized as a regular 
feature of the agriculture of particular crops. This is a very different 
idea, however, from that of general advice for or against " change 
of seed." 

Just as the diversity which arises in a new place may be com- 
pared to the diversity Avhich comes by crossing, so it may be that a 
useful increase of vigor can be secured merely by placing plants under 
new conditions, like the vigor that comes from crossing. In both 
cases it is possible to think of the vigor as attending a change of 
characters, and this fact may be connected in turn with the further 
fact that varieties held rigidly and long to one uniform set of char- 
acters appear to suffer an eventual deterioration. 

Though future experiments must determine the value of local 
adjustment in its application to particular varieties and conditions, 
our present facts are certainly sufficient to show that the usual meth- 
ods leave out of account a physiological factor of great practical 
importance. Every farmer who plants the same variety for even a 
second year from seed of his own raising will find it to his distinct 
advantage to take the fact of local adjustment into account. He need 
not think of the advantage of selection of seed as connected only with 
a policy of slowly improving his stock by a persistent selection 
through a long course of years. He may secure a very distinct and 
practical advantage by selecting his seed for a single season, even if 

159 



CONCLUSIONS. 65 

lie intends to stop farming the jq'AV after, or to discard the variety 
he is now phmting. While there is every reason to expect that a slow 
improvement may be wronght by persistent selective breeding, the 
neglect of local adjustment means that Ave forfeit the chance of 
making an immediate gain or of protecting ourselves against an 
nnmediate loss. 

The selection of seed has seemed, even to the progressive cotton 
planter, as something out of his line of work, something to be done 
by the special grower or the seed dealer. Intelligent planters appre- 
ciate the importance of good seed, but they are usually content to show 
this appreciation by bringing in some well-recommended variety 
from a distance, growing it for a series of years until it appears to 
'' run out," and then replacing it by another new stock. The fact 
that the new sort is often found to be better than the old is still 
accepted as proof of the value of this custom, notwithstanding all 
the evidence of experiments and demonstrations that better crops of 
cotton can be grown from seed raised in the same j)lace than from 
seed newly brought in from a distance. The advice of the seed 
dealer to change the seed has appeared to the farmer to have quite 
as good reasons behind it as the advice of the experiment stations to 
make his own selection of seed. 

Unless a fact is properly understood we can not separate it from 
its apparent contradictions. New seed may be better than home- 
grown seed if no selection has been practiced, but, on the other hand, 
the best new sort may fail to show its full possibilities Avhen planted 
for the first time in a new place. Even the very best variety may need 
to be selected in the place where it is grown to get the best crop. 
The superiority of new seed and the superiority of home-grown 
seed are both facts, and they are not contradictory as they have 
long appeared to be. They help to explain each other when viewed 
in the proper light. The farmer can raise better seed of his present 
variety for himself than he can possibly buy from a dealer, but this 
does not mean that he is not to look for better varieties. It means 
rather that promising varieties must have fair chances to show what 
they can do by testing them for two or more years instead of judging 
their possibilities by the results of the first planting. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

The growing of a variety of cotton in a new locality is likely to 
bring about a distinct reduction in the yield as well as in the quality 
of the fiber. This deterioration has been found to be connected with 
an increase of diversity among the individual plants. Even when a 
carefully selected, uniform stock is used for the experiment a much 
greater amount of diversity may appear in a new place than when 

15!) 



66 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

the same stock is groAvn iiiidei' acciistoined conditions of tlie previous 
locality where the variety was improved by selection. 

The cliversity that reappears in the first season when a variety of 
cotton is grown in a new place can be greatly reduced in later seasons 
by selecting seed from the plants whose characteristics have been least 
disturbed by the transfer to the new place — those that are the most 
fertile and have the best lint. This process of selection to restore 
the uniformity of a variety in a new place is called local adjustment. 

Selection. for local adjustment is distinct in objects and methods 
from breeding for improvement or for originating new varieties. 
The object of local adjustment is to j^reserve varieties already exist- 
ing and guard them against recurrence of diversity. Practical ad- 
vantages can be secured by simple selection for local adjustment 
without the separate testing of individual lines of descent, as required 
in breeding for improvement of a variety or when new breeds are to 
be developed. 

The phenomena of local adjustment are of general scientific inter- 
est as illustrating one of the influences of external conditions upon 
the expression of characters in organisms. The recurrence of di- 
versity in a previously uniform variety serves with other facts to 
show that ancestral diversities continue to be inherited, even wdien 
their expression is avoided by eiRcient selection. That changes of 
conditions can induce a return to diversity shows that the environ- 
ment is able to influence the expression of characters and that its 
influence is not limited to characters that vary directly and regularly 
with changes of environment. 

Apart from the etfects of conditions which limit or inhibit the 
growth of the plants, two kinds of changes are found to follow trans- 
fer to new places: (1) Changes of accommodation to different con- 
ditions and (2) diversification or loss of uniformity. Changes of 
acconmiodation do not directly increase diversity, for they are shared 
by all the individuals, but changes of accommodation are often ac- 
companied by changes of other characters which render the individual 
plants much more unlike than before. 

It is not necessary to believe that the diverse characteristics that 
appear in the new place come into the plants from the external envi- 
ronment or that they represent direct effects of the environment upon 
the plants. It is more reasonable to suppose that new conditions 
induce diversity in an indirect manijer by disturbing the processes 
of heredity, and thus allowing ancestral characters that had been 
transmitted in latent form to return to expression, or characters pre- 
viously expressed to become latent. Eecurrence of diversity may be 
quite independent of hybridization, although some of the results are 
very similar. 

159 



CONCLUSIONS. 67 

The phenomenon of local adjustment only strengthens the many 
other evidences that the uniformity of a variety of cultivated plants 
can be maintained only by persistent and vigilant selection. The 
decrease in the agricultural value of a variety that results from a 
return to diversity is as real and imj^ortant as the agricultural im- 
provement that is made when diversity is reduced by selection. 

The facts of local adjustment go far to explain the apparently 
capricious behavior of cotton varieties in comparative tests, the same 
varieties often standing in entirely different relations to each other in 
diiferent seasons. It becomes evident that the adaptation of a variety 
to a new place can not be fairly tested in a single season. Not until 
a new stock has passed through the process of local adjustment and 
returned to a normal degree of uniformity can the extent of its 
adaptation to the new place be definitely ascertained. 

The facts of local adjustment indicate that our superior varieties 
may be found adapted to much wider regions than they now occupy. 
Varieties of real value should have their range extended through 
local adjustment, instead of being discarded because they fail to shoAV 
their superiority in the first season. The wider extension of a few 
superior types of cotton would make it possible to abandon many local 
varieties and would constitute an important step in the progress of 
the cotton industry. Greater uniformity in the crop over large areas 
would increase its commercial value and simplify commercial prob- 
lems of grading and marketing. 

159 



INDEX 



Pago. 

Acclimatization and local adjustment 14 

definition 7 

difficult with close-bred varieties 52 

effect on number of locks 34 

Accommodation, changes distinct from new-place diversity 11, 13 

of characters 44 

definition -. 13 

Adai)tation, definition 13 

Adjustment, local, a means of preventing change 56 

advantage continuous 8 

and breeding, differences 56-62 

as a farm operation 62-63 

cause of increased yields " 30-31 

compared with acclimatization 7 

confused with selection 8 

distinct from breeding for improvement 8 

factors variable 9 

forms of diversity obvious 11 

limitations 54-56 

most important with superior varieties 9 

nature 53 

object 8 

relation to other variations 44-54 

selection 52-54 

time necessary 38 

tests 31-35 

value 7-8 

of processes of growth 29 

Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, experiments with cotton 19 

Albinism, nature 29 

Ancestry, common, of Upland series of cotton 20. 21 

Bean, Lima, climbing habit 28 

Boll weevils. See Weevils, boll. 

Bolls, cotton, five-locked, larger proportion due to local adjustment 34-35 

increased size due to local adjustment 34 

opening, in Central American varieties 33 

East Indian varieties 33 

sharp-pointed, correlated with longer lint 45 

tendency to smallness and roundness at Yuma, Ariz 46 

Bracts, irregular formation 25 

Branches, cotton, abnormal, Triumph variety 20 

classification 23 

different kinds 34 

diversity 13 

short primary. Triumph variety 20 

159 69 



70 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VAEIETIES. 

Page. 

Branching, form definitely inherited 23 

importance of method 34 

Breeding and local adjustment, differences 56-62 

for improvement distinct from local adjustment 8 

Cabbage, mutations 29 

seed, superiority in certain years 36 

Cahabon district, Guatemala, cotton 48 

Capsicum, mutations 29 

Changes, mutative, and accommodation 12 

Galton's law 12 

general 12 

Characters, correlation, and new-place effects 45^6 

divergent, tests of inheritance 20-25 

enyironmental, hereditary nature 44-45 

expression controlled by selection 28 

in species of animals and plants, appearance 52 

suppression a cause of mutation 29 

Cluster habit associated with moist condition 25 

short lint 32 

varieties, nature - 29 

Coffee plant, diversity in leaves 13 

mutations 29 

Color essential in jjlants 29 

Conclusions of bulletin 65-67 

Corn, sweet, albino seedlings 29 

uniformity of ears 62 

Correlation of characters and new place effects 45 

nature 45 

Cotton, Beat All, tests in Georgia 42 

Central American and Triumph, comparison 17 

hairy type, similar to Triumph mutation 20 

varieties, opening of bolls 33 

Cook's Improved, improvement by local adjustment 30 

East Indian varieties, opening of bolls 33 

Egyptian, uniformity 62 

Hawkins, bolls, opening in first and second year plants 33 

size 34 

fiber, quality 32 

improvement by local adjustment 30 

Kekchi, number of locks 34 

seeds 48 

similarity to Sunflower mutation 21 

Triumph mutation 20 

King, behavior of original stock 22 

bolls, opening in first and second year plant 33 

diversity 26 

experiments 22 

fiber, quality 32 

mutation, absence of basal limbs 22-23 

lint, sujjeriority 22, 24 

primary limbs 23 

mutations 22 

159 



INDEX. 71 

Page. 

Cotton, King, occurrence of leaves of okra type 25 

origin 26 

McCall, bolls, size 34 

experiments at Kerrville, Tex 31 

fiber, quality 32 

improvement by local adjustment 30 

success at Kerrville, Tex 31 

Mexican, at Del Rio and Victoria, Tex 13 

first locally adjusted 40 

white seeded 47 

Pachon, seeds 48 

similarity to Sunflower mutation 21 

Parker, at Del Rio, Tex 4()-50' 

bolls, opening in first and second year plants 33 

size 34 

fiber, quality 32 

habits of branching 48 

improvement by local adjustment 30 

locks, number 35 

plant, elaborate measurements impracticable 12 

Sea Island, uniformity 62 

Sunflower mutation, similarity to Kekchi cotton 21 

Texas Stormproof, source of Triumph cotton 57 

Triumph, abnormal plant at Lockhart, Tex., description 21 

and Central American varieties compared 17 

at Kerrville, Tex 17, 27 

bolls, opening in first and second year plants 33 

size 34 

branches 20 

divergent types 20 

improvement by local adjustment 30 

lint, peculiarities 21 

origin 17, 57 

seed, age and diversity 35 

first and second year, comparison 19 

taken from Lockhart to Kerrville, Tex 20 

succession of planting 49 

under different conditions 16 

uniformity 17 

Upland series, common ancestry 20-21 

See also Bolls, Varieties, and Weevils. 

Crops, difference, and age of seed 35-37 

Cross-fertilization, extent 31 

seed, as an aid to acclimatization 52 

pollination, danger 39 

Darwin, observation on newly introduced plants 60 

Del Rio, Tex., agricultural conditions compared with those at Kerrville, Tex. . 54 

comparison of cotton crop of different years 54 

conditions unfavorable for local adjustment differences 33 

counting of bolls 32 

locks 35 

effect of late planting 49 

159 



72 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VARIETIES. 

Page. 

Del Rio, Tex., experiments with cotton 31-33, 35, 46 

failure of local adjustment 64 

Mexican cottons, experiments 13 

Parker cotton, experiments 48-50 

Diversities, new-place, and mutations ■ 16 

relation to heredity 15-16 

Diversity a cause of low yield 10 

accompanied by environmental changes 46 

as a new-place effect 10-15 

avoidance by local adjustment 11 

conditions favorable 11 

eliminated by selection 27 

in King cotton 26 

Triumph cotton at Kerrville, Tex 18 

two localities compared 16-19 

wild species 53 

increased, accompaniment of environmental changes 46-47 

inherent 11 

new-place, adaptive value 14 

and sterility 14 

as experiments in accommodation 14 

loss of adjustment 14 

material for breeding 57 

compared with hybridization 38 

distinct from accommodation to external conditions 13-15 

fluctuating variation 11-13 

magnitude 12 

not adaptation 14 

not an indication of unfavorable conditions 16 

caused by environment 16 

destroyed by selection 15 

due to reversion 28 

explained by differences of environment 10 

result of careless selection 19 

transmitted in uniform types 16 

without hybridization 26-30 

Downing, A . J . , quotation 37 

Duggar, J. F., quotation 19 

Earliness, cause of increased yield 32 

distinct kinds 33 

increased by local adjustment 32-34 

value against boll weevils 33 

East, E. M., reference to work on potato breeding 36 

Ecology, object 47 

Eggplant, mutation 27 

Environment, changes accompanied by increased diversity 46-47 

direct effects distinct from diversity under new conditions 11 

Eucalyptus, diverse leaves 45 

Falfurrias, Tex., cotton experiments 11, 34 

Mexican cotton experiments 47, 48 

Ferguson, A. M., observation 59 

Fertility reduced by luxuriant growth 46 

159 



INDEX. 73 

Page. 

Fertilizers, effect on mutations 51 

Fibers, cotton, quality improved by local adjustment 32 

Fuzz, green color, decrease in second generation 21 

Galton's law and mutative changes 12 

Georgia, conditions compared with those at Kerrville, Tex 31 

test of Beat All cotton 42 

Gin, cotton, danger of mixing seed 41 

Halsted, B. D., reference to work with sweet corn 29 

Hart's Improved, synonym of Beat All cotton 42 

Heredity and ecology 47 

internal machinery 46 

relation to new-place diversities 15-16 

Hybridization, cause of diversity 11 

comparison with new-place diversity 38 

not essential for diversity 26-30 

Internodes, growth as an adjustment 29 

shortening confined to extra -axillary branches 29 

Introduction to bulletin 7-10 

Juniper, diverse leaves 45 

Kerrville, Tex., conditions compared with those at Del Rio, Tex 54 

cotton experiments 30, 32 

with McCall variety 31 

seeds of different ages 35 

Triumph variety 16,17,20,27 

location 17 

Kinsler, J . H . , observation 21 

Leaves, entire in King mutation 24 

five-lobed in Triumph cotton 20 

narrow in King mutation 24 

Lettuce, mutations 29 

Lewton, F. L., observations 31, 34, 47, 48 

Limbs, basal, absence in King mutation 22-23 

strong in King cotton 22 

primary, in King mutation 23 

Lint best at end of rows of cotton 46 

diversity on individual plants 55 

inferior, associated with luxuriant growth 46 

length in sharp-pointed bolls 45 

of King mutation, superiority 22, 24 

peculiarities in Triumph cotton 21 

Local adjustment. See Adjustment, local. 

Lockhart, Tex., experiment with Triumph cotton 16 

location 16 

Locks, number 34 

Meade, Rowland M., observations 20, 34 

Mebane, Alexander, originator of Triumph cotton 17 

Mendelism, terminology 61 

Mutation caused by suppression of characters 29 

of garden vegetables 27 

Sunflower cotton 21 

tendency in natural orders 27 

159 



74 LOCAL ADJUSTMENT OF COTTON VAETETIES. 

rage. 

llutations and Gallon's law 60 

as new-place diversities 16 

species 12 

cause 50 

diversity 47 

in cotton and tomatoes compared 51 

different types 27 

King 22 

increased by changed conditions 13 

inheritance 25 

promiscuous and aggregate 50-52 

Peas, sweet, simultaneous appearance of dwarf form 28 

Phyllotaxy, abnormal in Triumph cotton 20 

Planting at different dates, yield 50 

time and seasons, effect on variation 47-50 

effect on fertility 49 

Plants and animals, cause of evolutionary development 44 

behavior, method of observation 30-31 

diversity as a new-place effect 10-15 

inheritance of divergent characters, tests 20-25 

isolation necessary for local adjustment ■ 41 

open-fertilized , new-place effects pronounced 52 

Potatoes, old varieties, stability 36 

Regression, law, and mutative changes 12 

Reversion a cause of diversity 28 

Roguing a form of local adjustment 56 

San Antonio, Tex., experiments with cotton 21, 22, 25, 49 

King 22 

Triumph 49 

Sandsten, Prof. E. P., quotation 51 

Seasons and time of planting, effect on variation 47-50 

Seed, age, and difference of crops 35-37 

change in color 48 

not beneficial 64 

diversity in individual plants 55 

green in Mexican cotton 48 

home-grown, superiority 63-65 

peculiarities in Triumph cotton 21 

smooth in King mutation 24 

Selection, children capable of practicing 9 

confused with local adjustment 8 

continued, necessary for uniformity 51 

controls character expression 28 

effects on cross-fertilized plants 61 

deficiency due to unfavorable conditions 55 

natural, opposed to artificial selection 14 

preserves diversities 15 

of little effect in self-fertilized varieties 61 

seed important 9 

relation to local adjustment 52-54 

unable to destroy diversity 16 

Shoemaker, D. N., observation 26 

159 



INDEX. 75 

Page. 

Soils, change, effect on local adjustment 54 

irregularity a source of diversity 31 

South Carolina, agricultural conditions compared w th those at Kerrville, Tex. 31 

Squash, mutation 27 

Sturtevant, Dr. E. L., quotation 43 

Thiselton-Dyer, W. T., quotation 61 

Tomatoes, mutations 27 29 

Tracy, W. W., sr., observation .* 36 

quotation 27-28 

work on garden peas 57 

vegetables 29 

Tyler, F. J., observations 21 42 

Uniformity, desirability in community 42 

importance 15 

in one character 62 

necessity g 

not a natural condition ; 53 

secured by selection I5 

Van Mons, method of breeding 37 

Variation, fluctuating, distinct from new-place diversity 11-13 

Varieties, cotton, limbless, nature 29 

methods of testing 37-40 

use, limitation 43 

new, methods of introduction 40-43 

unfortunate multiplicity 41 

Vegetables, garden, mutation 27 

Victoria, Tex., experiments with cotton 13, 21, 47 

Mexican 13, 47 

Weevil-infested regions, importance of local adjustment 8 

Weevils, boll, effect of late planting of cotton 49 

injury to young bolls 33 

losses made good by local adjustment 8 

rainy weather favorable to development 8 

White, Dr. C. A., work on tomatoes 51 

Winfield, Kans., experiment with cotton 34 

Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, experiment with tomatoes 51 

Woods, A. F., suggestion 15 

Yields from different dates of planting 50 

increased by local adjustment 30-31 

method of estimating 31 

of different selections 59 

Yuma, Ariz., experiments with Pachon cotton 48 

tendency to small, rounded bolls 46 

159 

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